Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.
As we head into the final days of the 21/22awards season we can safely say that no matter what happens next Sunday chaos will likely reign. Many precursor events have left us scratching our heads (CODA wins SAG? Don’t Look Up takes the WGA over Licorice Pizza, Attica beats Summer of Soul at the DGA’s) and with The Academy membership looking vastly different than it did just five years ago we may be on the cusp of a whole new playbook in terms of prognosticating. Many of the old rules are being re-writing or even thrown out the window as the voting bodies diverge and streaming further shapes the industry. Though some may lament the unpredictability of an Oscar season like this, (Kristen Stewart’s nom, Gaga’s Snub, CODA’s rise, or the collapse of Belfast, and maybe The Power of the Dog pulling a Roma – how?) we for our part are reveling in it.
There is technically still time left in the season as AMPAS voting concludes tomorrow but we are sitting on just about as much information we expect to gleam before Sunday. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog still tops our Awards Leaderboard by a comfortable margin but recent gaffes by the director and surprising losses at the BAFTA‘s and PGA’s are highlighting the film’s weaknesses, especially with older Academy voters. Still, with over 30 Best Picture wins it is hard to say if anyone else could top that kind of momentum. The best chance for an upset would be for Apple’s first major film acquisition the upstart sound to be frontrunner CODA. The film debuted at the Sundance and despite a rather tepid release, the feel-good family flick about an aspiring singer from a deaf family has captured the hearts of voters just at the right time. Will that be enough to win it all? We find out on Sunday. Check back here for our final Oscar predictions later this week but in the meantime, you watch our video on how to win your Oscar Ballot.
Read on to find out where your favorite movies stand, and let us know what you think in the comments.
From an artistic perspective, 2021 has been an excellent cinematic vintage, yet the bounty is shadowed by an air of doom. The reopening of theatres has brought many great movies—some of which were postponed from last year—to the big screen, but fewer people to see them. The biggest successes, as usual, have been superhero and franchise films. “The French Dispatch” has done respectably in wide release, and “Licorice Pizza” is doing superbly on four screens in New York and Los Angeles, but few, if any, of the year’s best films are likely to reach high on the box-office charts. The shift toward streaming was already under way when the pandemic struck, and as the trend has accelerated it’s had a paradoxical effect on movies. On the one hand, a streaming release is a wide release, happily accessible to all (or to all subscribers). On the other, an online release usually registers as a nonevent, and many of the great movies hardly make a blip on the mediascape despite being more accessible than ever.
New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
When tracking the fortunes of ambitious movies, it’s important to keep an eye on the spread—not, as in sports betting, the handicap of numbers but the aesthetic spread that separates the most original films of the day from prevailing commercial norms. The past two decades have been a time of peaceful revolution in the movies. Established auteurs, from Spike Lee to Martin Scorsese, have found liberation through the rise of independent producers, and ultra-low-budget outsider independents—including Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, Joe Swanberg, the late Lynn Shelton, and others in their orbits —have broken through to the mainstream and shifted the very core of commercial cinema. (Among the marks of the narrowed spread are the overwhelming success of such distinctive movies as “Moonlight,” “Us,” and “Little Women,” and the franchise stardom of Adam Driver.) But these shifts have led to an industry snapback—a reconquest and occupation of studio terrain. The hiring of Terence Nance to direct “Space Jam 2” was a welcome sign of progress; his departure from the project, in July of 2019 (reportedly because of creative differences), was a sign that the winds of Hollywood were pushing back to familiar shores. (The movie, titled “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” came out in July; it isn’t good, but it’s high on the year’s box-office chart.) The double whammy of overproduced mega-spectacles in theatres and audiovisual snackables at home is a sign that, even if theatrical viewing bounces back, movies’ place in the market is likely to be even more tenuous.
In one sense, this pattern is as old as the movies themselves: for every advance, there’s a reaction. In the earliest years of Hollywood, a century ago, a star-driven system gave way to a director-driven one, which studio executives then quickly clamped down on. What emerged was a top-down system that, ever since, has seemed, absurdly, like a natural and ineluctable state of the art. More recently, in the seventies, filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came along to devise a new pop conservatism, rooted in television and nostalgia, that quickly pushed the most forward-looking of their New Hollywood peers toward the industry’s margins. The lesson is that there is nothing natural, inevitable, or immutable about the Hollywood way of doing things—neither the methods of production nor the dictates of style and form that result. (The absence of a unified and centralized documentary system is why nonfiction, as reflected in this year’s list, has continued its aesthetic expansion uninhibitedly.)
Even before the pandemic, it was becoming tougher for artistically ambitious, low-budget features to get any theatrical release, let alone achieve commercial viability. (Several of the best independent films that I’ve seen in recent years remain unreleased to this day.) But the economics of streaming services present their own peculiar challenges. With theatrical releases, viewers don’t pay for a ticket unless they want to see a movie. Streaming subscriptions, in effect, amount to paying in advance for movies before they are available, which means that platforms have an incentive to deliver the familiar—whether narrowly formatted star-and-genre movies or films by name-brand auteurs, who can easily draw interest. And the widening spread between the most profitable movies and the most original filmmakers risks putting pressure on directors to soften or suppress their most original inspirations, or to filter them into formats, genres, or systems that resist or counteract them.
There’s a danger worse than the studios and their overproduced, over-budgeted methods: a debilitated Hollywood that would relinquish its filmmaking dominance to an even smaller number of giant streaming services. Netflix and Amazon (and, to a lesser extent, Apple TV+) have done respectable jobs of producing and releasing artistically worthy movies, including some that are high on my list. They do it so that they can compete, as players rather than disrupters, with studios and major independent producers for prestigious artists and projects. But if theatrical viewing continues to shrink, taking with it the studios’ preëminence and turning independent producers and distributors into dependent husks, the big streaming services will have much less incentive to finance movies of any significant artistic ambition.
The economics of any individual movie are irrelevant to the progress of the art form; the pantheon of classics has no connection to the industry’s treasury. Yet the careers of filmmakers are inseparable from their ability to secure access to financing, and the history of cinema is a graveyard of unrealized projects that should serve as a cautionary tale against the squandering of worthy talent. Young filmmakers working outside the system and with scant expectations of getting in are the future of the cinema, which is an art form that doesn’t know what it needs until it gets it. The art advances through a generational takeover—which can happen only when movies seem worth taking over at all. As an avid moviegoer wary of the threat of contagion, I go to theatres cautiously, with careful attention to screenings where there are large numbers of empty seats around me. Yet each empty seat bodes ominously for the future of feature filmmaking over all. The cinema has weathered crises of many sorts, economic and political, but if movies themselves hold any lesson, a rebirth is as likely to resemble a zombie as a phoenix.
A note on this list: for last year’s picks, when releases were in flux because of the pandemic, I included movies that were available to stream through festivals and special series. Several of those films have had official releases in 2021, and I’ve included them again, to retain (or restore) adherence to the traditional calendar.
Wes Anderson’s wildly comedic, yet fiercely serious, adaptation of stories and personalities from the classic age of The New Yorker unleashes a self-surpassing torrent of dramatic and decorative complexity, philosophical power, and physical intensity. It’s an extraordinary film of the life of the mind-body connection, of history in the present tense.
What Paul Thomas Anderson lays out as a pugnaciously romantic coming-of-age story for a teen-age actor and a hectic trip of self-discovery for a twentysomething dreamer, set in the San Fernando Valley of the early seventies, turns wondrously and gleefully into his version of “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood”—and a vastly superior one at that, owing to the wide-ranging scope of his tenderness, skepticism, humor, and insight.
With the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, the film industry has been struggling to release reliable information concerning upcoming movie premieres and where to watch them. But never fear! Hollywood Insideris here to help you get your 2021 movie calendar in order. We’ll discuss all the biggest releases of 2021, as well as where to access these films and when.
Brief Summary: A modern, musical retelling of the classic fairytale that features singer Camila Cabello in her feature film debut and Billy Porter as a genderless fairy godmother.
Brief Summary: One of the first films to be entirely produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, this simple story follows a filmmaker and his lover as they return to their home following a successful premiere.
Brief Summary: In the second installment of the series, Eddie Murphy plays Prince Akeem Joffer, who returns to America after learning he has a son living in Queens.
Brief Summary: As an extension of the television show by the same name, this musical-comedy follows the Belchers and their typical family hijinks as they continue to run their restaurant.
Directed By: Loren Bouchard, in his directorial debut
Starring: H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, and Larry Murphy
Brief Summary: Based on the video game of the same name, this film represents the third installment of the live-action films and a reboot of the series, as the last film was released in 1997.
Directed By: Simon McQuoid, in his directorial debut
Starring: Ludi Lin, Joe Taslim, and Jessica McNamee
Brief Summary: The film takes place directly after the events of the first film, following the remaining Abott family members as they venture into the unknown.
Brief Summary: Following a case from the files of supernatural investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren, the film portrays one of the first times that a murder supsect claims demonic possession as defense for the crime.
Brief Summary: Based on the musical of the same name, In the Heights follows a group of mostly Latino characters living in Washington Heights, New York City.
Directed By: Jon M. Chu
Starring: Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, and Leslie Grace
Brief Summary: Instead of serving as a direct sequel to the 2016 film, ‘Suicide Squad’, this film serves to introduce new characters to the DC universe and expand on the story using the original comics for inspiration.
Brief Summary: Based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name, Death on the Nile serves as a follow-up to the 2017 film Murder on the Orient Express, featuring Kenneth Branagh reprising the role of Hercule Poirot
Brief Summary: Based on the Broadway musical of the same name, this remake serves to provide a fresh take on the original story of two star-crossed lovers in 1950s New York City.
An excerpt from the love letter: Hollywood Insider’s CEO/editor-in-chief Pritan Ambroase affirms, “Hollywood Insider fully supports the much-needed Black Lives Matter movement. We are actively, physically and digitally a part of this global movement. We will continue reporting on this major issue of police brutality and legal murders of Black people to hold the system accountable. We will continue reporting on this major issue with kindness and respect to all Black people, as each and every one of them are seen and heard. Just a reminder, that the Black Lives Matter movement is about more than just police brutality and extends into banking, housing, education, medical, infrastructure, etc. We have the space and time for all your stories. We believe in peaceful/non-violent protests and I would like to request the rest of media to focus on 95% of the protests that are peaceful and working effectively with positive changes happening daily. Media has a responsibility to better the world and Hollywood Insider will continue to do so.”
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In a dramatic turn of events, Alec Baldwin‘s involuntary manslaughter trial for the fatal 2021 shooting ofRustcinematographer Halyna Hutchins was dismissed Friday over “critical evidence” that a New Mexico judge ruled had been concealed.
“The state has repeatedly made representations to defense and to the court that they were compliant with all their discovery obligations,” New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in her ruling from the bench just now. “Despite their repeated representations, they have continued to fail to disclose critical evidence to the defendant.”
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“The state is highly culpable for its failure to provide discovery to the defendant,” Sommer added in a measured tone. “Dismissal with prejudice is warranted,” she concluded.
The ruling ends any hope of the state recharging Baldwin again.
Alec Baldwin and wife Hilaria embrace in a New Mexico courtroom Friday after hearing his involuntary manslaughter case has been dismissed
Ramsay de Give-Pool/Getty Images
Breaking down in tears at the defense table, the multi-Emmy-winning actor was in the courtroom when Sommer announced her ruling on the defense motion to dismiss based on concealed evidence that Baldwin’s lawyer filed late Thursday, relating to ammunition brought to police by an ex-cop.
The decision by Sommer on Friday, at the end of an evidentiary hearing over a defense motion to dismiss over bullets dropped off to Santa Fe police in recent weeks by ex-Arizona cop Troy Teske, could also mean the release of incarcerated Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed from New Mexico state prison.
With the constant chorus of local police missteps, blatant professional incompetence, DA stumbles and eccentrics that has been center stage in this matter since that terrible day almost three years ago, the dismissal of the case was simultaneously shocking and not that unexpected.
Hutchins was fatally shot, and Rust director Joel Souza was injured, on October 21, 2021 after the Colt .45 Baldwin was pointing at the cinematographer fired off a live round during a rehearsal at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe where the indie Western was filming. Facing up to 18 months in state prison if found guilty, Baldwin has always insisted that while he cocked the hammer, he did not pull the trigger and the gun somehow went off on its own. The FBI, an independent analysis and, yesterday in court the man who actual made the gun all disagreed with Baldwin’s contention — which we will likely never know definitively now.
After nervous Rust ammunition supplier Seth Kenney and a series of Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office members gave testimony Friday, including bodycam footage of Teske bringing the ammunition to the cop shop, an exasperated special prosecutor Kari Morrissey decided to roll the dice and take the stand herself.
Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers plan to file a motion for her release ASAP, I hear; Sommer was also the judge in the armorer’s trial. Gutierrez-Reed had been brought to Santa Fe earlier this week from prison, where she is serving her sentence, in the assumption she would be a witness in Baldwin’s trial as soon as today.
Special Prosecutor Erlinda Johnson in court this week
Ross D. Franklin – Pool/Getty Images
Just three days into what was supposed to be a nearly two-week trial, Erlinda Johnson, one of the special prosecutors in the case, resigned. The sudden move came because Johnson, who only joined the case a couple of months ago, didn’t agree with there being a public hearing on the move by Baldwin’s Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Sullivan to see the matter tossed to the legal curb.
“I could see it was not at all similar to the live rounds on the set of Rust so I made the decision not to collect the rounds since they had never left Arizona,” Morrissey told the court on the record, as she and police officials had stated before of the ammunition brought in by Teske.
A close friend of Thell Reed, the iconic Hollywood gun coach and father of Gutierrez-Reed, Teske was never called as a witness in the armorer’s trial this spring and the defendant’s own lawyer Jason Bowles said he didn’t want them, according to Morrissey. Not long afterwards, Teske took the ammunition to the police – something the defense claims it was just informed of despite requiring all the evidence in the case.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey in court on Thursday
Ramsay De Give/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Over the months since Baldwin was recharged earlier this year, the defense had quibbled over and over about evidence, discovery and tactics with what has sometimes seen like a battle of locals versus city slickers. In that context, New York City-based defense lawyer Alex Spiro today accused Morrissey of not liking Baldwin personally. Almost spitting out the words, Spiro claimed Morrissey has called Baldwin “an arrogant prick” and a “c*cksucker” in the past.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Morrissey replied, insisting that she likes a number of Baldwin’s movies, SNL appearances and “his politics.” The special prosecutor also tried to state on the record that she offered Baldwin, a longtime Democrat, a plea deal early this year.
Before Morrissey could get far down that route, she was shut down by both Spiro and Sommer. “I never said to witnesses that I would teach him a lesson,” Morrissey added to further claims by Spiro. “Absolutely not.”
There was talk about a new possible plea deal today, sources tell me, but that never came together. On the other hand, with a TLC reality show in the works likely to pay some of those sizable legal bills and a couple of documentaries on the Rust calamity in production, Baldwin’s freedom from criminal prosecution could see the well-respected actor back on the big and small screen in scripted roles as a big draw for the first time in years.
A career resurrection that might begin with Rust itself.
As the march towards this trial and that of Gutierrez-Reed moved slowly forward, the one time Jensen Ackles co-starring filmwas brought back last year without the young armorer or the Supernatural actor. Rust 2.0 completed production in Montana in early 2023 with Souza was as director, and Baldwin as star and producer. The now-finished Rust hasn’t secured a buyer nor distributor. Some sources have said that was always the plan until Baldwin’s legal woes were over. Others have told Deadline that the film has been actively shopped at film markets to no success. That might change in short order now that Baldwin’s criminal trial is old news.
Having left the courtroom and likely Santa Fe in a hurry Friday after Sommer’s ruling, Baldwin hasn’t quite left his Rust legal troubles in the dust. The actor is up against several civil cases in California and New Mexico courts related to the film he conjured up with Souzaand the terrible shooting on the movie’s set.
During a year when moviegoers largely stayed at home, it’s rather fitting that three of the top five Action Adventure movies were Westerns (yes, High Ground is distinctly Australian, but it’s a Western in spirit). What better way to help ease that cabin fever than to gaze at lushly photographed vistas and watch grizzled cowpokes ride swiftly across them on their majestic steeds? But perhaps even more fitting than that is the fact that Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond topped the list to take home the Golden Tomato, which, we’re sure, will be the crowning achievement of his tenure as 007.
The order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2021) after adjustment from our ranking formula, which compensates for variation in the number of reviews when comparing movies or TV shows.
Shrek’s long-awaited return has been confirmed, with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz all set to return for the lovable green ogre’s first film for 16 years.
A plotline for the movie is yet to be revealed, but Myers will play the title character, Diaz will voice Shrek’s wife Princess Fiona and Murphy will return as sidekick Donkey.
Announcing the news, DreamWorks Animation said on X: “Not too Far, Far Away… Shrek 5 is coming to theatres on July 1 2026 with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz.”
The first film was released back in 2001, and won the first Oscar for best animated feature film.
It was a huge hit for DreamWorks, making $487m worldwide at the box office.
Shrek 2 was released in 2004, Shrek The Third came out in 2007, and Shrek Forever After hit cinemas in 2010.
Shrek 5 will in fact be the seventh film in the wider franchise, after Antonio Banderas’ character had two spin-off films – Puss In Boots and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.
It is unknown whether Banderas will be back for Shrek 5.
Murphy hinted in an interview with Collider last month that Donkey could also be getting his own spin-off movie.
He also said work on Shrek 5 started “months ago”.
“I recorded the first act, and we’ll be doing it this year, we’ll finish it up,” he said.
“Shrek is coming out and Donkey’s gonna have his own movie.”
As we head into the final days of the 21/22awards season we can safely say that no matter what happens next Sunday chaos will likely reign. Many precursor events have left us scratching our heads (CODA wins SAG? Don’t Look Up takes the WGA over Licorice Pizza, Attica beats Summer of Soul at the DGA’s) and with The Academy membership looking vastly different than it did just five years ago we may be on the cusp of a whole new playbook in terms of prognosticating. Many of the old rules are being re-writing or even thrown out the window as the voting bodies diverge and streaming further shapes the industry. Though some may lament the unpredictability of an Oscar season like this, (Kristen Stewart’s nom, Gaga’s Snub, CODA’s rise, or the collapse of Belfast, and maybe The Power of the Dog pulling a Roma – how?) we for our part are reveling in it.
There is technically still time left in the season as AMPAS voting concludes tomorrow but we are sitting on just about as much information we expect to gleam before Sunday. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog still tops our Awards Leaderboard by a comfortable margin but recent gaffes by the director and surprising losses at the BAFTA‘s and PGA’s are highlighting the film’s weaknesses, especially with older Academy voters. Still, with over 30 Best Picture wins it is hard to say if anyone else could top that kind of momentum. The best chance for an upset would be for Apple’s first major film acquisition the upstart sound to be frontrunner CODA. The film debuted at the Sundance and despite a rather tepid release, the feel-good family flick about an aspiring singer from a deaf family has captured the hearts of voters just at the right time. Will that be enough to win it all? We find out on Sunday. Check back here for our final Oscar predictions later this week but in the meantime, you watch our video on how to win your Oscar Ballot.
Read on to find out where your favorite movies stand, and let us know what you think in the comments.
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All-new adventures starring Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, the art of Marvel Studios’ ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ and an Artist’s Edition spotlight on Frank Miller’s Daredevil.
