Movies

You think you're cool because you can sneak a box of Milk Duds and a bottle of Cherry Coke into the movies? Puh-leeze.

Good reviews and a phenomenal marketing campaign did their job this weekend. No number of foot-in-mouth moments from Matt Damon could harm the opening weekend of The Martian, which opened in the number one spot at the box office. After a surprisingly robust September, this is another sign that we may very looking at one of the bigger fall movie seasons in quite some time.

All summer movie seasons end with a whimper and 2015 was no different. The final weekend of August was a pretty sad display across the board, with Straight Outta Compton nabbing the number one spot by default while just about every new release faltered. You know it’s a slow weekend when a movie promoted exclusively to faith-based audiences nabs the number two spot.

As expected, the Fourth of July holiday weekend saw a lot of people heading to the theater. Unfortunately for the new releases, those people gravitated toward films that have already been in theaters for a few weeks. Once again, Jurassic World and Inside Out dominated the top 10, leaving newcomers like Terminator Genisys and Magic Mike XXL out in the cold.

It's a Star Wars tradition to participate in a splashy Vanity Fair cover shoot by famed photographer Annie Liebowitz and Star Wars: Episode 7 is no different (although it almost was: rumors were that J.J. Abrams wanted to buck that tradition, but Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was able to talk him into it). The cast and crew of The Force Awakens are on the cover of the upcoming June issue and while even more photos will be revealed, we do get our first look at Adam Driver without his Kylo Ren mask and Lupita Nyong’o’s motion-capture character!

LEGO recreations of trailers and scenes from films are often pretty fun to watch, though they’re not always of the best quality, as fans rush to complete and reveal their projects before someone else beats them to the punch. That’s not the case with Morgan Spence, a 15-year-old kid from Scotland whose LEGO recreations of famous movie scenes are really top notch. His latest project recreates the famous funeral scene from Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel—not the typical film you’d expect to see LEGO form, but once you do, you’ll be quite charmed.

When The Avengers arrived in 2012, the massive final battle between Earth’s mightiest heroes and Loki’s alien army ended up being much bigger and more exciting than the trailers suggested. From the sound of things, we may be in for a similar treat with Avengers 2. In a new interview, writer/director Joss Whedon discussed many aspects of the upcoming sequel, but it’s his comments about the Avengers 2 ending that should get you the most interested.

Last we heard, Warner Bros. hadn’t yet officially given the Wonder Woman solo film the green light, which wasn’t entirely surprising given that a script wasn’t firmly in place. But today brings good news on the Wonder Woman front: shooting will begin this fall for the hero’s upcoming solo adventure, with — as previously confirmed — Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad vet Michelle MacLaren in the director’s chair.

The dust has barely settled from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and already we’ve got a look at the lineup for the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival. After an initial announcement that included opening night film ‘Brand,’ about comedian Russell Brand,’ things have filled out really nicely with a ton of promising-sounding selections.

Computers have certainly come a long way in the last way -- almost as much as computers in movies.

A crime thriller, an animated romp and a raunchy comedy—just the dose of variety the movie doctor ordered for what's been a rather bland summer season at cinemas so far.

Okay, so only one new movie this week, but it's a biggie: the fourth installment in the robot-alien-EXPLOSIONS!!! saga based on a 1980s cartoon.