Entertainment

Sony drops new trailer for 28 Years Later: Bone Temple

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Sony Pictures, Trailers / Rejus Almole / December 3, 2025

Then, 28 days after leaving, Spike was rescued from a horde of infected by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), another original survivor who turned out to be the leader of a barbaric cult. That’s where the sequel picks up. Spike, Kelson, and Crystal will play major roles in The Bone Temple. Per the official premise:

Dr. Kelson finds himself in a shocking new relationship—with consequences that could change the world as they know it—and Spike’s encounter with Jimmy Crystal becomes a nightmare he can’t escape. In the world of The Bone Temple, the infected are no longer the greatest threat to survival—the inhumanity of the survivors can be stranger and more terrifying.

Samson the Alpha Zombie is back, too. The cast also includes Erin Kellyman, Emma Laird, and Maura Bird as Jimmy Ink, Jimmima, and Jimmy Jones, all members of Crystal’s cult. Best of all, Cillian Murphy will reprise his 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later starring role as intrepid bike courier Jim, who miraculously survived the first two movies and, apparently, the ensuing 28 years.

The trailer opens with an exchange between Kelson and Crystal, in which the latter asks if Kelson is “Old Nick,” i.e., Satan. It’s a reasonable assumption, given that morbid bone temple. We also see Spike joining Crystal’s ranks and Kelson remembering the happier past before sharing a moment of truce with Samson. “I believe the infection can be treated,” Kelson says later, and in the final scene, we see him give Samson an injection representing “a leap into the unknown.” Will it really cure Samson? We know there’s already another film in the works, so that might be an interesting twist.

Look for 28 Years Later: Bone Temple to hit theaters on January 16, 2026.

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Blast from the past: 15 movie gems of 1985

culture, Entertainment, film, film anniversaries, listicles / Tim Belzer / November 27, 2025

Beyond the blockbusters: This watch list has something for everyone over the long holiday weekend.

Peruse a list of films released in 1985 and you’ll notice a surprisingly high number of movies that have become classics in the ensuing 40 years. Sure, there were blockbusters like Back to the Future, The Goonies, Pale Rider, The Breakfast Club and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, but there were also critical arthouse favorites like Kiss of the Spider Woman and Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ran. Since we’re going into a long Thanksgiving weekend, I’ve made a list, in alphabetical order, of some of the quirkier gems from 1985 that have stood the test of time. (Some of the films first premiered at film festivals or in smaller international markets in 1984, but they were released in the US in 1985.)

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

After Hours

young nerdy man in black shirt and casual tan jacket looking anxious — Credit: Warner Bros.

Have you ever had a dream, bordering on a nightmare, where you were trying desperately to get back home but obstacle after obstacle kept getting in your way? Martin Scorsese’s After Hours is the cinematic embodiment of that anxiety-inducing dreamscape. Griffin Dunne stars as a nebbishy computer data entry worker named Paul, who meets a young woman named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) and heads off to SoHo after work to meet her. The trouble begins when his $20 cab fare blows out the window en route. The date goes badly, and Paul leaves, enduring a string of increasingly strange encounters as he tries to get back to his uptown stomping grounds.

After Hours is an unlikely mix of screwball comedy and film noir, and it’s to Scorsese’s great credit that the film strikes the right tonal balance, given that it goes to some pretty bizarre and occasionally dark places. The film only grossed about $10 million at the box office but received critical praise, and it’s continued to win new fans ever since, even inspiring an episode of Ted Lasso. It might not rank among Scorsese’s masterworks, but it’s certainly among the director’s most original efforts.

Blood Simple

man in tan suit crawling on the pavement at night in front of truck with headlights glaring. Feet of a man holding an axe is off to the right. — Credit: Circle Films

Joel and Ethan Coen are justly considered among today’s foremost filmmakers; they’ve made some of my favorite films of all time. And it all started with Blood Simple, the duo’s directorial debut, a neo-noir crime thriller set in small-town Texas. Housewife Abby (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with a bartender named Ray (John Getz). Her abusive husband, Julian (Dan Hedaya), has hired a private investigator named Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) and finds out about the affair. He then asks Visser to kill the couple for $10,000. Alas, things do not go as planned as everyone tries to outsmart everyone else, with disastrous consequences.

Blood Simple has all the elements that would become trademarks of the Coen brothers’ distinctive style: it’s both brutally violent and acerbically funny, with low-key gallows humor, not to mention inventive camerawork and lighting. The Coens accomplished a lot with their $1.5 million production budget. And you can’t beat that cast. (It was McDormand’s first feature role; she would go on to win her first Oscar for her performance in 1996’s Fargo.) The menacing shot of Ray dragging a shovel across the pavement toward a badly wounded Julian crawling on the road, illuminated by a car’s headlights, is one for the ages.

Brazil

anxious man being restrained with his head in a weird futuristic helmet — Credit: Universal Pictures

Terry Gilliam’s Oscar-nominated, Orwellian sci-fi tragicomedy, Brazil, is part of what the director has called his “Trilogy of Imagination,” along with 1981’s Time Bandits and 1988’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Jonathan Pryce stars as a low-ranking bureaucrat named Sam Lowry who combats the soul-crushing reality of his bleak existence with elaborate daydreams in which he is a winged warrior saving a beautiful damsel in distress. One day, a bureaucratic error confuses Sam with a wanted terrorist named Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro), setting off a darkly comic series of misadventures as Sam tries to prove his true identity (and innocence). That’s when he meets Jill (Kim Greist), a dead ringer for his dream woman.

Along with 12 Monkeys and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil represents Gilliam at his best, yet it was almost not released in the US because Gilliam refused the studio’s request to give the film a happy ending. Each side actually ran ads in Hollywood trades presenting their respective arguments, and Gilliam ultimately prevailed. The film has since become a critical favorite and an essential must-watch for Gilliam fans. Special shoutout to Katherine Helmond’s inspired supporting performance as Sam’s mother Ida and her addiction to bad plastic surgery (“It’s just a little complication….”).

Clue

a group of people in dinner party fancy dress staring at the door. — Credit: Paramount Pictures

Benoit Blanc may hate the game Clue, but it’s delighted people of all ages for generations. And so has the deliciously farcical film adaptation featuring an all-star cast. Writer/director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny) does a great job fleshing out the game’s premise and characters. A group of people is invited to an isolated mansion for a dinner with “Mr. Boddy” (Lee Ving) and are greeted by the butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry). There is Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull), and Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren).

After dinner, Mr. Boddy reveals that he is the one who has been blackmailing them all, and when the lights suddenly go out, he is murdered. As everyone frantically tries to figure out whodunnit, more bodies begin to pile up, culminating in three different endings. (A different ending was shown in each theater but now all three are included.) The script is packed with bad puns and slapstick scenarios, delivered with impeccable comic timing by the gifted cast. And who could forget Kahn’s famous ad-libbed line: “Flames… on the side of my face“? Like several films on this list, Clue got mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, but found its audience in subsequent decades. It’s now another cult classic that holds up even after multiple rewatchings.

The Company of Wolves

beautiful young dark-haired girl in a red hooded cape talking to a darkly handsome young man with a rakish look about him — Credit: ITC Entertainment

Director Neil Jordan’s sumptuous Gothic fantasy horror is a haunting twist on “Little Red Riding Hood” adapted from a short story by Angela Carter in her anthology of fairy-tale reinventions, The Bloody Chamber. The central narrative concerns a young girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) who sports a knitted red cape and encounters a rakish huntsman/werewolf (Micha Bergese) in the woods en route to her grandmother’s (Angela Lansbury) house. There are also several embedded wolf-centric fairy tales, two told by Rosaleen and two told by the grandmother.

Jordan has described this structure as “a story with very different movements,” all variations on the central theme and “building to the fairy tale that everybody knows.” The production design and gorgeously sensual cinematography—all achieved on a limited $2 million budget—further enhance the dreamlike atmosphere. The Company of Wolves, like the fairy tale that inspired it, is an unapologetically Freudian metaphor for Rosaleen’s romantic and sexual awakening, in which she discovers her own power, which both frightens and fascinates her. It’s rare to find such a richly layered film rife with symbolism and brooding imagery.

Desperately Seeking Susan

two young women, similar in appearance, dressed in 1980s New Wave outfits and striking a sultry pose for the camera — Credit: Orion Pictures

In this quintessential 1980s screwball comedy about mistaken identity, Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a dissatisfied upper-class New Jersey housewife fascinated by the local tabloid personal ads, especially messages between two free-spirited bohemian lovers, Susan (Madonna) and Jim (Robert Joy). She follows Susan one day and is conked on the head when a mob enforcer mistakes her for Susan, who had stolen a pair of valuable earrings from another paramour, who had stolen them from a mobster in turn. Roberta comes to with amnesia and, believing herself to be Susan, is befriended by Jim’s best friend, Dez (Aidan Quinn).

Desperately Seeking Susan is director Susan Seidelman’s love letter to the (admittedly sanitized) 1980s counterculture of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, peppered with cameo appearances by performance artists, musicians, comedians, actors, painters, and so forth of that time period. The script is rife with witty one-liners and a stellar supporting cast, including John Turturro as the owner of a seedy Magic Club, Laurie Metcalf as Roberta’s sister-in-law Leslie, and a deadpan Steven Wright as Leslie’s dentist love interest. It’s breezy, infectious, frothy fun, and easily Madonna’s best acting role, perhaps because she is largely playing herself.

Dreamchild

Young dark-haired girl with a bob in a white dress sitting down for tea with a a giant March Hare and the Mad Hatter — Credit: Thorn EMI

Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective) co-wrote the screenplay for this beautifully shot film about Alice Liddell, the 11-year-old girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. Coral Browne plays the elderly widowed Alice, who travels by ship to the US to receive an honorary degree in celebration of Lewis Carroll’s birthday—a historical event. From there, things become entirely fictional, as Alice must navigate tabloid journalists, a bewildering modern world, and various commercial endorsement offers that emerge because of Alice’s newfound celebrity.

All the while, Alice struggles to process resurfaced memories—told via flashbacks and several fantasy sequences featuring puppet denizens of Wonderland—about her complicated childhood friendship with “Mr. Dodgson” (Ian Holm) and the conflicting emotions that emerge. (Amelia Shankley plays Alice as a child.) Also, romance blooms between Alice’s companion, an orphan named Lucy (Nicola Cowper), and Alice’s new US agent, Jack Dolan (Peter Gallagher).

Directed by Gavin Millar, Dreamchild taps into the ongoing controversy about Carroll’s fascination, as a pioneer of early photography, with photographing little girls in the nude (a fairly common practice in Victorian times). There is no evidence he photographed Alice Liddell in this way, however, and Potter himself told The New York Times in 1985 that he didn’t believe there was ever any improper behavior. Repressed romantic longing is what is depicted in Dreamchild, and it’s to Millar’s credit, as well as Holm’s and Browne’s nuanced performances, that the resulting film is heartbreakingly bittersweet rather than squicky.

Fandango

a group of young men in casual garb standing in a row in front of a car against a classic Americana small town background — Credit: Warner Bros.

Director Kevin Reynolds’ Fandango started out as a student film satirizing fraternity life at a Texas university. Steven Spielberg thought the effort was promising enough to fund a full-length feature. Set in 1971, the plot (such that it is) centers on five college seniors—the Groovers—who embark on a road trip to celebrate graduation. Their misadventures include running out of gas, an ill-advised parachuting lesson, and camping on the abandoned set of Giant, but it’s really about the group coming to terms with the harsh realities of adulthood that await, particularly since they’ve all been called up for the Vietnam draft.

Spielberg purportedly was unhappy with the final film, but it won over other fans (like Quentin Tarantino) and became a sleeper hit, particularly after its home video release. The humor is dry and quirky, and Reynolds has a knack for sight gags and the cadences of local dialect. Sure, the plot meanders in a rather quixotic fashion, but that’s part of the charm. And the young cast is relentlessly likable. Fandango featured Kevin Costner in his first starring role, and Reynolds went on to make several more films with Costner (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rapa Nui, Waterworld), with mixed success. But Fandango is arguably his most enduring work.

Ladyhawke

Handsome man in period dress standing close to a beautiful woman with short blonde hair, as they both look apprehensively into the distance. — Credit: Warner Bros.

Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer star in director Richard Donner’s medieval fantasy film, playing a warrior named Navarre and his true love Isabeau who are cursed to be “always together, yet eternally apart.” She is a hawk by day, while he is a wolf by night, and the two cannot meet in their human forms, due to the jealous machinations of the evil Bishop of Aquila (John Wood), once spurned by Isabeau. Enter a young thief named Philippe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), who decides to help the couple lift the curse and exact justice on the bishop and his henchmen.

Ladyhawke only grossed $18.4 million at the box office, just shy of breaking even against its $20 million budget, and contemporary critical reviews were very much mixed, although the film got two Oscar nods for best sound and sound effects editing. Sure, the dialogue is occasionally clunky, and Broderick’s wisecracking role is a bit anachronistic (shades of A Knight’s Tale). But the visuals are stunning, and the central fairy tale—fueled by Hauer’s and Pfeiffer’s performances—succeeds in capturing the imagination and holds up very well as a rewatch.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

goofy man in tight fitting gray suit balancing sideways on a bicycle with a silly grin on his face — Credit: Warner Bros.

Paul Reubens originally created the Pee-Wee Herman persona for the Groundlings sketch comedy theater in Los Angeles, and his performances eventually snagged him an HBO special in 1981. That, in turn, led to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, directed by Tim Burton (who makes a cameo as a street thug), in which the character goes on a madcap quest to find his stolen bicycle. The quest takes Pee-Wee to a phony psychic, a tacky roadside diner, the Alamo Museum in San Antonio, Texas, a rodeo, and a biker bar, where he dances in platform shoes to “Tequila.” But really, it’s all about the friends he makes along the way, like the ghostly trucker Large Marge (Alice Nunn).

Some have described the film as a parodic homage to the classic Italian film, Bicycle Thieves, but tonally, Reubens wanted something more akin to the naive innocence of Pollyanna (1960). He chose Burton to direct after seeing the latter’s 1984 featurette, Frankenweenie, because he liked Burton’s visual sensibility. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is basically a surreal live-action cartoon, and while contemporary critics were divided—it’s true that a little Pee-Wee goes a long way and the over-the-top silliness is not to everyone’s taste—the film’s reputation and devoted fandom have grown over the decades.

A Private Function

a woman in a green dress and tight bun looking at a nervous man in white shirt and suspenders as he looks over his shoulder. — Credit: HandMade Films

A Private Function is an homage of sorts to the British post-war black comedies produced by Ealing Studios between 1947 and 1957, including such timeless classics as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, and The Ladykillers. It’s set in a small Yorkshire town in 1947, as residents struggle to make ends meet amid strict government rations. With the pending royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the wealthier townsfolk decide to raise a pig (illegally) to celebrate with a feast.

Those plans are put in jeopardy when local chiropodist Gilbert Chivers (Michael Palin) and his perennially discontented wife Joyce (Maggie Smith) steal the pig. Neither Gilbert nor Joyce knows the first thing about butchering said pig (named Betty), but she assures her husband that “Pork is power!” And of course, everyone must evade the local food inspector (Bill Paterson), intent on enforcing the rationing regulations. The cast is a veritable who’s who of British character actors, all of whom handle the absurd situations and often scatalogical humor with understated aplomb.

Prizzi’s Honor

woman and man dressed all in black, dragging a body by the legs. — Credit: 20th Century Fox

The great John Huston directed this darkly cynical black comedy. Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) is a Mafia hitman for the Prizzi family in New York City who falls for a beautiful Polish woman named Irene (Kathleen Turner) at a wedding. Their whirlwind romance hits a snag when Charley’s latest hit turns out to be Irene’s estranged husband, who stole money from the Prizzis. That puts Charlie in a dilemma. Does he ice her? Does he marry her? When he finds out Irene is a contract killer who also does work for the mob, it looks like a match made in heaven. But their troubles are just beginning.

Turner and Nicholson have great on-screen chemistry and play it straight in outrageous circumstances, including the comic love scenes. The rest of the cast is equally game, especially William Hickey as the aged Don Corrado Prizzi, equal parts ruthlessly calculating and affectionately paternal. “Here… have a cookie,” he offers his distraught granddaughter (and Charley’s former fiancée), Maerose (Anjelica Huston). Huston won a supporting actress Oscar for her performance, which probably made up for the fact that she was paid at scale and dismissed by producers as having “no talent,” despite—or perhaps because of—being the director’s daughter and Nicholson’s then-girlfriend. Prizzi’s Honor was nominated for eight Oscars all told, and it deserves every one of them.

The Purple Rose of Cairo

woman and a man in Depression-era garb gazing at each other in a loose embrace — Credit: Orion Pictures

Woody Allen has made so many films that everyone’s list of favorites is bound to differ. My personal all-time favorite is a quirky, absurdist bit of metafiction called The Purple Rose of Cairo. Mia Farrow stars as Cecelia, a New Jersey waitress during the Great Depression who is married to an abusive husband (Danny Aiello). She finds escape from her bleak existence at the local cinema, watching a film (also called The Purple Rose of Cairo) over and over again. One day, the male lead, archaeologist Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), breaks character to address Cecelia directly. He then steps out of the film and the two embark on a whirlwind romance. (“I just met a wonderful man. He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything.”)

Meanwhile, the remaining on-screen characters (who are also sentient) refuse to perform the rest of the film until Tom returns, insulting audience members to pass the time. Then the actor who plays Tom, Gil Shepherd (also Daniels), shows up to try to convince Cecilia to choose reality over her fantasy dream man come to life. Daniels is wonderful in the dual role, contrasting the cheerfully naive Tom against the jaded, calculating Gil. This clever film is by turns wickedly funny, poignant, and ultimately bittersweet, and deserves a place among Allen’s greatest works.

Real Genius

How could I omit this perennial favorite? Its inclusion is a moral imperative. Fifteen-year-old Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is a science genius and social outcast at his high school who is over the moon when Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton), a star researcher at the fictional Pacific Technical University, handpicks Mitch to work in his own lab on a laser project. But unbeknownst to Mitch, Hathaway is in league with a covert CIA program to develop a space-based laser weapon for political assassinations. They need a 5-megawatt laser and are relying on Mitch and fellow genius/graduating senior Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) to deliver.

The film only grossed $12.9 million domestically against its $8 million budget. Reviews were mostly positive, however, and over time, it became a sleeper hit. Sure, the plot is predictable, the characters are pretty basic, and the sexually frustrated virgin nerds ogling hot cosmetology students in bikinis during the pool party reflects hopelessly outdated stereotypes on several fronts. But the film still offers smartly silly escapist fare, with a side of solid science for those who care about such things. Real Genius remains one of the most charming, winsome depictions of super-smart science whizzes idealistically hoping to change the world for the better with their work.

Witness

little Amish boy peeking through a crack in the door — Credit: Paramount

Witness stars Harrison Ford as John Book, a Philadelphia detective, who befriends a young Amish boy named Samuel (Lukas Haas) and his widowed mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis) after Samuel inadvertently witnesses the murder of an undercover cop in the Philadelphia train station. When Samuel identifies one of the killers as a police lieutenant (Danny Glover), Book must go into hiding with Rachel’s Amish family to keep Samuel safe until he can find a way to prove the murder was an inside job. And he must fight his growing attraction to Rachel to boot.

This was director Peter Weir’s first American film, but it shares the theme of clashing cultures that dominated Weir’s earlier work. The lighting and scene composition were inspired by Vermeer’s paintings and enhanced the film’s quietly restrained tone, making the occasional bursts of violence all the more impactful. The film has been praised for its depiction of the Amish community, although the extras were mostly Mennonites because the local Amish did not wish to appear on film. (The Amish did work on set as carpenters and electricians, however.) Witness turned into a surprise sleeper hit for Paramount. All the performances are excellent, including Ford and McGillis as the star-crossed lovers from different worlds, but it’s the young Haas who steals every scene with his earnest innocence.

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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Benoit Blanc takes on a “perfectly impossible crime” in Wake Up Dead Man trailer

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, netflix, streaming television, Trailers, Wake Up Dead Man / Kris Guyer / November 17, 2025

Wake Up Dead Man garnered early rave reviews after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September, and an initial teaser released shortly after showcased Blanc puzzling over a classic locked-room mystery. The new trailer builds out some of the details without giving too much away.

Rev. Jud is the prime suspect in Wicks’ murder, since he loathed the man and hence had a clear motive, but he insists to Blanc that he is innocent. We learn that Wicks was wealthy, and this being a classic whodunit, we know the rest of the characters no doubt have their deep, dark secrets—one of which could have led to murder. And Johnson brings the humor, too, as Blanc, the groundskeeper, and Martha discover the desecration of Wicks’ tombstone with scrawled graffiti penises. “Makes me sick, these kids painting rocket ships all over his sacred resting place,” the unworldly Martha says.

Wake Up Dead Man will be in select theaters on November 26, 2025, and will start streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2o25. We can’t wait.

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Civil war is brewing in the wasteland in Fallout S2 trailer

culture, Entertainment, fallout s2, prime video, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers / Rejus Almole / November 13, 2025

Purnell, Goggins, MacLachlan, and Moten all return for S2, along with Moises Arias as Lucy’s younger brother, Norm, and Frances Turner as Barb Howard, Cooper’s wife and a high-ranking Vault-Tec executive. Justin Theroux joins the S2 cast as Mr. Robert House, founder and CEO of RobCo Industries, as well as Macaulay Culkin (possibly playing Caesar) and Kumail Nanjiani, both of whom appear briefly in the new trailer.

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has been searching for his family for 200 years. YouTube/Prime Video

The trailer opens with Maximus chatting with another denizen of the wasteland, who insists that while he’s seen lots of crazy and unnatural things in his struggle to survive, he’s never seen good people. Maximus has met one good person: Lucy. But his acquaintance isn’t having it. “I would be a good person too if I grew up in some cozy impenetrable home,” he says. “Wouldn’t have to steal and stab and fib all the time just to get by.”

Lucy, of course, has been challenged to hang onto her fundamental decency while navigating the brutal surface world, hardening just enough to do what’s necessary to survive. She’s now looking for her father with a new motive: to bring him to justice, “so people know that how they conduct themselves matters, and they don’t give up hope.” (We catch a few glimpses of Hank, most notably experimenting on a mouse in the lab, with disastrous results.) The Ghoul, for his part, is looking for his family; it’s the only reason he’s hung around for 200 years. Meanwhile, civil war is brewing, and you just know our main cast will all end up caught up in the conflict.

The second season of Fallout premieres on December 17, 2025, on Prime Video.

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Super Mario Galaxy Movie trailer introduces Princess Rosalina

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Nintendo, Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Trailers / Kris Guyer / November 12, 2025

Nintendo officially announced The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in September with the briefest of teasers, showing a napping Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom before panning out to reveal the film’s logo. Its 2026 release just happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the gaming franchise.

The main voice cast is returning for the sequel: Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as the anthropomorphic mushroom Toad, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Bowser’s advisor and informant Kamek. We’re also getting two new cast members: Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina, protector of the cosmos and the Lumas; and Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr., Bowser’s son and heir to the throne. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are also back, as is screenwriter Matthew Fogel.

The imprisoned Bowser features prominently in the trailer, as we see him in his mini-prison creating a painting of himself with Peach—and losing his temper when Mario dismisses it as “trash.” But that was just a momentary lapse, the “old Bowser talking,” as he continues to work through his personal demons. Then we see Mario and Peach jumping into a cosmic portal. We catch glimpses of Peach and Toad in an underwater world and a desert world and Peach showing off her fighting skills. Then Bowser Jr appears, vowing to take his father “now.”

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits US theaters on April 3, 2026, and will be released in Japan on April 24, 2026.

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The Running Man’s final trailer amps up the high-octane action

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Paramount Pictures, The Running Man, Trailers / Mike M. / November 10, 2025

It’s shaping up to be an excellent season for Stephen King adaptations. In September, we got The Long Walk, an excellent (though harrowing) adaptation of King’s 1979 Richard Bachman novel. Last month, HBO debuted its new series IT: Welcome to Derry, which explores the mythology and origins of Pennywise the killer clown. And this Friday is the premiere of The Running Man, director Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho) take on King’s novel of the same name. So naturally Paramount has released a final trailer to lure us to the theater.

As previously reported, the 1987 action film starring Schwarzenegger was only loosely based on King’s novel, preserving the basic concept and very little else in favor of more sci-fi gadgetry and high-octane action. It was a noisy, entertaining romp—and very late ’80s—but it lacked King’s subtler satirical tone. Wright expressed interest in adapting his own version of The Running Man in 2017, and Paramount greenlit the project four years later. Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall envisioned their film as less of a remake and more of a faithful adaptation of King’s original novel. (We’ll see if that faithfulness extends to the novel’s bleak ending.)

Per the official premise:

In a near-future society, The Running Man is the top-rated show on television—a deadly competition where contestants, known as Runners, must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins, with every move broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and each day bringing a greater cash reward. Desperate to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is convinced by the show’s charming but ruthless producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), to enter the game as a last resort. But Ben’s defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite—and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.

In addition to Powell and Brolin, the cast includes Lee Pace as lead Hunter Evan McCone; Jayme Lawson as Ben’s wife, Sheila; Colman Domingo as Bobby Thompson, game show host; Michael Cera as the rebel Bradley Throckmorton; William H. Macy as a man who aids Ben; David Zayas as Richard Manuel; Emilia Jones as Amelia, a hostage civilian; Karl Glusman as a Hunter; and Katy O’Brian and Daniel Ezra as two other contestants on the show.

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Netflix drops a doozy of a trailer for Stranger Things S5

culture, Entertainment, netflix, Stranger Things S5, streaming television, Trailers / Mike M. / October 30, 2025

We’re a few weeks away from the debut of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things—at least the first of three parts of it—and Netflix has dropped one doozy of a trailer that shows things looking pretty bleak for our small-town heroes of Hawkins.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As previously reported, S4 ended with Vecna—the Big Bad behind it all—opening the gate that allowed the Upside Down to leak into Hawkins. We’re getting a time jump for S5, but in a way, we’re coming full circle, since the events coincide with the third anniversary of Will’s original disappearance in S1. The fifth season will have eight episodes, and each one will be looong—akin to eight feature-length films. Per the official premise:

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.

In addition to the returning main cast, Amybeth McNulty and Gabriella Pizzolo are back as Vicki and Dustin’s girlfriend, Suzie, respectively, with Jamie Campbell Bower reprising his role as Vecna. Linda Hamilton joins the cast as Dr. Kay, along with Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow, and Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers.

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New Starfleet Academy trailer debuts at NYCC

culture, Entertainment, New York Comic Con, paramount plus, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, streaming television, Trailers / Rejus Almole / October 12, 2025

Rosta’s Caleb is front and center in the new trailer. We see him as a child with his mother (Tatiana Maslany), who is torn away from him by armed guards as Nus Braka cackles, “You hold on to how much you hate me right now, kid. It’ll keep you warm at night.” Cut to Captain Ake finding the now-grown Caleb and recruiting him to the Academy with a promise to help him find Nus Braka—presumably to exact some kind of revenge. We get to see instructors put the new cadets through their paces as they strive to be worthy of the Starfleet uniform. Love might be in the air for Caleb. And Captain Ake seems to have her own twisted history with Nus Braka.

As Ars senior editor Sam Axon pointed out in 2o23, there have been Kobayashi Maru references throughout the franchise, as well as substantial plotlines about the academy in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, among others. There were also Starfleet Academy video games in the 1990s for various platforms.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premieres on January 15, 2026, on Paramount+.

First look at Strange New Worlds S4

Let’s be honest, the third season of Strange New Worlds has been pretty uneven. But a course correction could be in the offing, judging by a four-and-a-half minute clip from the upcoming fourth season that was unveiled at NYCC. It’s an extended sequence in which Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew respond to a distress signal from another ship, only to encounter a massive space storm that knocks out almost all their systems. They decide to take a shuttle to a nearby planet to gather some much-needed iridium to power their warp drive. (Is anyone else hearing echoes of Galaxy Quest and the hunt for a replacement beryllium sphere?)

Still, the tone does seem more of a return to form for the series. (For what it’s worth, producer Akiva Goldsman has attributed the S3 issues in part to production delays as a result of strikes and staffing changes.) The fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is slated for release sometime next year. The series has already been renewed for a truncated fifth and final season of six episodes.

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms teaser debuts at NYCC

culture, Entertainment, Game of Thrones franchise, George R.R. Martin, HBO, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, streaming television, Trailers / Tim Belzer / October 9, 2025

A squire and his hedge knight: Dexter Sol Ansell plays “Egg” (l) and Peter Claffey plays Dunk (r). Credit: YouTube/HBO

This being a Game of Thrones series, there’s also an extensive supporting cast. Ross Anderson plays Ser Humfrey Hardyng; Edward Ashley plays Ser Steffon Fossoway; Henry Ashton as Egg’s older brother, Prince Daeron “The Drunken” Targaryen; Youssef Kerkour as a blacksmith named Steely Pate; Daniel Monks as Ser Manfred Dondarrion; Shaun Thomas as Raymun Fossoway; Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Plummer, a steward; Steve Wall as Lord Leo “Longthorn” Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden; and Danny Webb as Dunk’s mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree.

It’s a good rule of thumb in the Game of Thrones universe not to get too attached to any of the characters, and that probably holds true here, too. But Knight of the Seven Kingdoms also seems to be aiming for a different, lighter tone than its predecessors, judging by the teaser, which has its share of humor. Martin has said as much on his blog, although he added, “It’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe.”

Since Dunk is a humble hedge knight, there are lots of scenes with him trudging through mud and rain, and jousting will apparently feature much more prominently. “I always love Medieval tournaments in other pictures,” Martin said during a NYCC panel. “We had several tournaments in Game of Thrones, they were in the background, but not the center. I wanted to do something set during a tournament. I sent (the TV writers) a challenge: Let’s do the best jousting sequences that were ever done on film. My favorite was 1952’s Ivanhoe.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms debuts on HBO on January 18, 2026.

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Trailer for Anaconda meta-reboot leans into the laughs

Anaconda, creature features, culture, Entertainment, film, film trailers, Jack Black, paul rudd, Sony Pictures, Trailers / Tim Belzer / September 17, 2025

Sony Pictures has dropped a trailer for its upcoming horror comedy, Anaconda, a meta-reboot of the 1997 campy cult classic—and frankly, it looks like a lot of fun. Starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black, the film will arrive in theaters on Christmas Day.

(Spoilers for the 1997 film below.)

The original Anaconda was your basic B-movie creature feature, only with an all-star cast and better production values. The plot revolved around a documentary film crew (Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, and Owen Wilson) who travel to the Amazon in search of a long-lost Indigenous tribe. They take on a stranded Paraguayan snake hunter named Serone (Jon Voight, affecting a hilariously bad foreign accent), who strong-arms them into helping him hunt down a 25-foot green anaconda. He wants to capture the animal alive, thinking he can sell it for over $1 million.

The snake has other ideas, chowing down on the boat’s skipper and the crew’s sound engineer and still hungry for more. The remaining crew’s efforts to survive are hampered by Serone, who still wants the snake alive and even kills one of the crew members himself. So it’s really a form of justice when he’s eaten by a 40-foot queen anaconda at the film’s end.

Anaconda wasn’t well-received by critics, but it made a decent showing at the box office, grossing about $136 million globally. It has since become a cult classic, one of those “so bad it’s good” offerings. It was even nominated for six Razzie Awards, including for Worst Screen Couple (Voight and the animatronic anaconda).

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Fallout S2 teaser brings us to New Vegas

culture, Entertainment, Fallout TV series, prime video, streaming television, Trailers / Mike M. / August 20, 2025

Prime Video has dropped an extended teaser for the much-anticipated second season of Fallout, widely considered to be among the best TV adaptations of a gaming franchise. In our 2024 year-end roundup, Ars senior editor Samuel Axon wrote that the first season gave us “a specific cocktail of tongue-in-cheek humor, sci-fi campiness, strong themes, great characters, and visceral violence [that] came together into a fantastic show.” The second season looks like it will bring us more of the same, along with a major new character drawn from the Fallout: New Vegas game. We even got a glimpse of a Deathclaw.

(Minor spoilers for S1 below.)

For the uninitiated, Fallout is set two centuries after nuclear warfare between the US and China destroyed civilization in 2077—an alternate history version of 2077, in which post-World War II nuclear technology ushered in a retrofuturistic society. Some lucky survivors took refuge in various underground vaults; others were left to scavenge a meager existence on the highly radioactive surface.

In S1, we met Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), a young woman whose vault is raided by surface dwellers. The raiders kill many vault residents and kidnap her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), so the sheltered Lucy sets out on a quest to find him. Life on the surface is pretty brutal, but Lucy learns fast. Along the way, she finds an ally (and love interest) in Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire masquerading as a knight of the Brotherhood of Steel. And she runs afoul of a gunslinger and bounty hunter known as the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former Hollywood actor named Cooper Howard who survived the original nuclear blast, but radiation exposure turned him into, well, a ghoul.

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They’re golden: Fictional band from K-Pop Demon Hunters tops the charts

animated film, culture, Entertainment, film reviews, films, K-Pop Demon Hunters, netflix, Reviews, streaming television / Paul Patrick / August 12, 2025

The fictional band Huntr/x, from K-Pop Demon Hunters, has a real-world hit with “Golden.”

Netflix has a summer megahit on its hands with its animated musical feature film, K-Pop Demon Hunters. Since its June release, the critically acclaimed film has won fans of all ages, fueled by a killer Korean pop soundtrack featuring one earworm after another. The biggest hit is “Golden,” which just hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. (The last time a fictional ensemble topped the charts was in 2022 with Encanto‘s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”)

K-Pop Demon Hunters is now Netflix’s most-watched animated film of all time, and that’s not just because of the infectious music. The Sony Animation team delivers bold visuals that evoke the look and feel of anime, the plot is briskly paced, and the script strikes a fine balance between humor and heart.

(Spoilers below.)

The film deftly lays out the central premise in the first few minutes. In ancient times, demons roamed the Earth freely and preyed upon human souls, until a trio of women—gifted singers and demon hunters—created a magical protective barrier with their voices known as the Honmoon, trapping the demons behind it. The Honmoon has been maintained ever since by subsequent musical trios/demon hunters from each generation. The dream is that one day, the Honmoon will become so strong it will turn “golden” and seal away the demons forever.

Naturally the demons, led by their king Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun), don’t want that to happen, but the latest incarnation of demon hunters—a K-Pop band called Huntr/x—is close to accomplishing the Golden Honmoon. Rumi (Arden Cho) is the lead singer, Mira (May Hong) is the group’s dancer/choreographer, and American-born Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) is the rapper and lyricist. But Rumi harbors a secret: her father was a demon, and she is marked by the telltale purple “patterns,” which she keeps hidden from her bandmates.

Hoping to destroy the Honmoon once and for all, Gwi-Ma sends five of his demons to form a K-pop boy band, the Saja Boys, led by Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop). Their popularity soon rivals that of Huntr/x and threatens the Honmoon—just as Rumi’s patterns spread to her throat and weaken her singing voice.

How it’s done, done, done

Mira, Rumi, and Zoey take a timeout from fighting demons to carb-load with ramen. Netflix

That’s a big problem because their new hit single, “Golden” (performed by South Korean singer/songwriter Ejae), spans an impressive three-octave range, eventually hitting an A-5 on the chorus—a high note usually reserved for classically trained operatic sopranos. (Ejae’s performance on this song has impressed a lot of YouTube vocal coaches.) And the first live global performance of “Golden” is supposed to be the event that ushers in the Golden Honmoon. It’s a soaring, impeccably constructed “I Want” tune typical of Disney princesses.

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