More than six decades separate Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) and Ben Affleck’s Animals (2026), yet both begin with the same terrible predicament. A wealthy man learns that his son has been kidnapped and that the ransom threatens everything he has built. Then comes the reversal: the kidnappers have taken the wrong child. His own son is safe. A poorer family’s child is in danger, and saving him will come at a tremendous personal cost.

Heaven has a numbers problem. Hardly anyone passes the entrance exam any more, intake has dried up, and management is close to writing the whole century off. Hell has the opposite trouble, which is overcrowding. Then a woman on Earth prays for her son, a boxer with a bad past and a head injury that could kill him, and both head offices scramble a field agent to go get him.

About ninety minutes in I checked how much was left. That’s the honest version of this review. The rest is me trying to work out why, because the idea underneath this film is good enough that it should have worked. Here’s the idea. Robin Hood was never the man in the ballads. He robbed and he killed and he was very good at it, and then he lived long enough to hear children sing songs about a version of himself that never existed.

IMAX Corporation (NYSE: IMAX) has notched its biggest global opening weekend ever, pulling in $52 million alongside Universal Pictures’ release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The film marks the first theatrical release ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, and IMAX captured a striking 20% share of the movie’s worldwide debut. Nolan’s mythic action epic, built around a next-generation IMAX film camera and a new sync-sound system developed specifically for the shoot, broke a long list of company records on its way around the globe:

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale arrived on Netflix in March, and its renewed audience activity this spring suggests the platform’s subscribers are finding it now, months after the theatrical run closed. That is an appropriate fate for a franchise that always played the long game. The film earned 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — the highest critical score across the three Downton features — against a $50 million budget and $103 million at the worldwide box office.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the first Hunger Games prequel, had the difficult task of making audiences care about a young Coriolanus Snow — the series’ established villain — without either redeeming him or making the film’s emotional investment incoherent. It largely succeeded, though it polarized readers of Suzanne Collins’s novel who felt the adaptation simplified the political argument the book was making. Sunrise on the Reaping, releasing November 2026, follows Haymitch Abernathy at sixteen during the 50th Hunger Games — the Second Quarter Quell, which is mentioned briefly in the original trilogy as the Games where twice the usual number of tributes were sent.

Before there was a European Union, before there was a concept of Europe as a political project, there was European art making arguments that crossed borders without needing passports. Bach was played in Italy. Italian opera colonized every European capital. Spanish painters shaped French modernism. Dostoevsky was read in Berlin the year he was published. The cultural circulation that preceded political integration by centuries is the deepest evidence that European identity exists at a level below institutional design.

Spend enough time inside the worlds built by Taylor Sheridan and a pattern starts to press in from the edges—at first it feels like grit, then like fatalism, and eventually like something closer to ritual. His protagonists don’t just risk death; they orbit it. They lean into it. They behave as if survival is incidental, almost inconvenient, compared to the clarity that comes from stepping right up to the edge. It’s not quite a death wish in the melodramatic sense.

The zombie should not work as a monster. It is slow. It is stupid. It cannot plan, negotiate, or adapt. It has no menace beyond mass and hunger, no psychology to speak of, no capacity for the cruelty that makes a truly frightening antagonist. And yet the zombie film has outlasted nearly every other horror subgenre, mutated across decades of cinema, and shown a cultural staying power that more sophisticated monsters — vampires, werewolves, the various children of Frankenstein — have largely failed to match.

Some stories don’t announce themselves as connected—you just feel it, like déjà vu that won’t quite resolve. Watching Traqués / The Hunt (2025), that sensation creeps in early. Not from a specific scene, not even from a character, but from the way tension is constructed. That slow, almost methodical transition from order to breakdown. And once you’ve seen it before, it becomes difficult to unsee. The closest structural ancestor is unmistakably Shoot.

Edward Berger’s Conclave is not really about Catholicism. It’s about institutions — what they conceal, what they protect, and what happens when the machinery of legitimacy meets a secret it cannot process. That it’s set inside the Vatican is almost incidental. The College of Cardinals could be a corporate board, a politburo, a supreme court. The dynamic is identical. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, tasked with managing a papal election after the sudden death of the Pope.

There’s a particular kind of betrayal that only beloved franchises can pull off. It’s not the betrayal of a bad sequel, which at least has the decency to feel like an accident. This is something more premeditated—the kind where everyone involved clearly watched the original, absorbed its surfaces, and then systematically hollowed out everything underneath. Immortal Man does not fail despite its ambitions. It fails through them. Congratulations are almost in order.

The art of cinema has long provided a platform for filmmakers to explore human nature, morality, and the complex interplay of perspective and truth. Two films that masterfully delve into these themes are Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021). Though these films are separated by over seventy years and distinct cultural contexts, they share a similar narrative structure and thematic focus: the concept of subjective truth.

“Those About to Die,” the 2024 historical drama series, promises a grand depiction of ancient Rome’s gladiatorial arenas, but unfortunately, it falls short of expectations in several critical areas and even the legendary Anthony Hopkins fails to save the day. Despite a potentially intriguing premise, the show struggles with uneven pacing, superficial character development, and historical inaccuracies that are hard to overlook. From the outset, the narrative feels disjointed, with scenes that lack fluidity and coherence.

Step back into the ancient world where glory and betrayal reign supreme, as Ridley Scott presents “Gladiator 2”. This highly anticipated sequel to the legendary film “Gladiator” promises to deliver a cinematic experience that will leave audiences breathless. The story unfolds years after the tragic death of Maximus Decimus Meridius, a name that still resonates in the annals of Roman history. The once-mighty empire stands on the brink of collapse, with internal strife and external threats tearing at its foundations.

French cinema has long been recognized for its rich and diverse contributions to global film culture, and one of its most intriguing and influential genres is “film noir.” Literally translating to “black film,” this genre is characterized by its dark, moody atmospheres, morally ambiguous characters, and complex, often cynical narratives. While film noir is widely associated with American cinema, its roots and expression in French film offer a unique and compelling dimension.

“Sisu,” directed by Jalmari Helander and released in 2023, is an action-packed film set in the final days of World War II in northern Finland. The story centers on Aatami Korpi, a former soldier turned prospector, who discovers a cache of gold in the desolate Lapland wilderness. As Aatami attempts to transport his newfound wealth to the city, he encounters a retreating Nazi battalion led by the ruthless SS officer Bruno Helldorf.

Spaghetti Westerns, a distinctive subgenre of Western films, emerged in the mid-1960s and captivated audiences worldwide with their unique style, storytelling, and memorable music. These films, predominantly produced and directed by Italians, earned their moniker due to their origin in Italy and the heavy Italian involvement in their creation. Unlike traditional American Westerns, Spaghetti Westerns often showcased a grittier, more cynical view of the Old West, characterized by morally ambiguous characters, stark landscapes, and dramatic, operatic scores.

Film noir, a genre that emerged during the 1940s and 1950s, is distinguished by its dark, cynical, and visually striking style. Rooted in German Expressionism and shaped by the socio-political climate of post-World War II America, film noir captures the essence of a world filled with moral ambiguity, existential dread, and complex characters. The visual style of film noir is iconic, characterized by stark lighting contrasts, deep shadows, and an overall chiaroscuro effect.