TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 18:20:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 18:20:00

by | Jul 29, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

James Gunn’s “Superman” is positively overstuffed with ideas. Whether you see that as a good thing or a bad thing is mostly dependent on how you feel about his take on the titular character, which makes for a stark contrast with Zack Snyder’s gritty and grounded approach to the Man of Steel (one that, arguably, never fit him very well).

Rather than continue to chase the trend of dark comic book movies made by Snyder, Gunn has swerved in the opposite direction with the first movie in his newly-launched DC Universe. In doing so, he fashioned Superman into a character who carries the future of Metropolis on his shoulders, balancing between sadness and hope in ways that speak to the superhero’s enduring 80+ year run as the embodiment of justice in pop culture.

But comic books aren’t all just battles between good and evil. They can also feature some really wild and crazy turns, with super dogs and robot butlers that feel normal to any comic book veteran but look bizarre from an outsider’s point of view. And Gunn loves to indulge in these strange characters. Hell, he basically made “The Suicide Squad” into a love letter to forgotten C- and D-tier supervillains. And “Superman” is no exception.

Throughout “Superman,” we’re introduced to a bevy of minor characters with deep backstories, ranging from Nathan Fillion’s smug Green Lantern Guy Gardener to Antony Carrigan’s surprisingly soulful Metamorpho. However, it turns out none of them hold a candle next to the gonzo backstory for Gunn’s “favorite” character in the film: Mr. Handsome.

Mr. Handsome was 12 year old Lex Luthor’s first attempt to create life

Superman facing off with Lex in his office in Superman (2025)

Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros.

“Superman” presents its Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) as a tech genius who’s more that willing to bend the laws of society (and even reality) to serve his needs, much in the same way our real-life supervillains think they alone deserve the power to reshape the world in their image. Lex’s contempt for Superman (David Corenswet) appears to stem from his insecurity about just how perfect Superman is, and so he goes to dramatic lengths to foil the do-gooder. He has a team of super powered metahumans to assist him in this task, but the oddest one of the bunch is someone we only briefly see on screen: Mr. Handsome.

If the Greendale Human Being from “Community” had a love child with the fleshy Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the baby would probably look something like Mr. Handsome. His affectionate title sounds like its a small ironic joke hidden in the middle of a movie positively packed with gags, but Gunn revealed on Twitter that Mr. Handsome’s backstory with Lex goes far deeper than you might have assumed:

When people ask me my favorite character from #Superman it just might be Mr. Handsome. Lex created Mr. Handsome in a Petri dish when he was 12 — he was trying to make a human. He didn’t come out so well, but he just might be the only one in the world Lex has any true sentiment for, as evidenced by the photo on his desk. Our Mr. Handsome was portrayed by the wonderful Trevor Newlin.

With such an outlandish backstory (one that’s bound to make people go “WTF?!” while simultaneously adding a hint of humanity to Hoult’s twisted portrayal of his bald baddie), it’s easy to see why Mr. Handsome is Gunn’s favorite character in the film. And now, hopefully, he’ll be your favorite character too.

“Superman” is currently playing in theaters.

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson Gush About Their Team-Up in ‘The Naked Gun’: “So Much Fun”

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson Gush About Their Team-Up in ‘The Naked Gun’: “So Much Fun”

by | Jul 29, 2025 | Articles, Hollywood Reporter Articles

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson Gush About Their Team-Up in ‘The Naked Gun’: “So Much Fun”

More than 30 years after the original franchise, The Naked Gun is back, this time helmed by Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson.

The film stars Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., son of Leslie Nielsen’s Detective Sergeant Frank Drebin, as he follows in his bumbling father’s footsteps and must solve a murder case to prevent the police department from shutting down.

Both Neeson and Anderson brought their sons to the New York premiere on Monday — as the Internet buzzes about if their onscreen connection has transferred offscreen — and Neeson joked to The Hollywood Reporter on the carpet that working together “was really hard to do.”

“It was so much fun, it was such a great project and what a great way to get to know somebody and laugh every day, just know that you’re contributing to something funny,” Anderson gushed of their collaboration.

And as for if they ever questioned what they got themselves into in the out-of-the-box comedy, Neeson admitted, “There was a few of those, yeah. But it was all still joyful.” Anderson added, “It was fun to be part of something that was just schoolboy humor, schoolgirl humor and just have a few laughs. Everyone likes to have those belly laughs and be silly. I think laughter is medicine and I think it’s much needed.”

The movie is written and directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer, with Seth MacFarlane serving as a producer. MacFarlane said he considers Schaffer a defining comedy writer who has rewritten how people use the medium, noting, “He approaches comedy from a selfless point of view. He’s out to get laughs, he’s out to make his audience happy; he’s not going in to win Oscars, he’s just here to do the job that comedy’s supposed to do.”

The Naked Gun hits theaters on Friday.

Neha Joy contributed to this report.

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 18:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 18:00:00

by | Jul 29, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

released its ranking of the 100 best movies of the 21st century so far. While not everyone was happy with the list (in part because the picks weren’t as international in scope as they could’ve been), it’s hard to argue with each individual movie they chose. Ranked #4 on the list was “In the Mood for Love,” a 2000 romance film directed by Wong Kar-wai. 

Sofia Coppola was among the filmmakers who chose “In the Mood for Love” as one of the 10 movies on her ballot, and the film’s entry on the list quotes her reasons for including it. “It really blew my mind that you could make films in that way, as a poetic medium that doesn’t have to spell everything out,” Coppola wrote. “It felt like something I hadn’t seen before and it was really inspiring to make things that were more impressionistic.”

It makes sense that Coppola loved this movie so much, since her 2003 film “Lost in Translation” scratches a similar itch. Both movies are about two people who clearly have a connection but who can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) ever become an official couple. Both are quiet, aching films about loneliness and simmering tension, and both would end up on the NYT’s list of best ever movies. (“Lost in Translation” was ranked 30th, and received a shoutout from Pamela Anderson.) 

Coppola’s been open about loving “In the Mood for Love” over the years, even giving Wong Kar-Wai a shoutout in her acceptance speech when she won an Oscar for the screenplay. After thanking her friends and family, she thanked “the filmmakers whose movies inspired me when I was writing this script: [Michelangelo] Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai, Bob Fosse, [Jean-Luc] Godard, and all the others.”

Both ‘In the Mood for Love’ and ‘Lost in Translation’ trust their audience a lot

Lost in Translation, Bob and Charlotte standing next to each other, Charlotte in a pink wig

Focus Features

As Coppola notes, “In the Mood for Love” was unique in how little it would spell things out. The movie is about two married people who start an emotional affair after finding out their spouses are cheating on them with each other, but we never actually see their cheating spouses. Sometimes you’ll hear them in the background of an early scene, or you’ll see the back of their heads, but for the most part the focus is entirely on the main two characters, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). 

The relationship between Mo-wan and Li-zhen is remarkably restrained. They never actually make a move on each other, yet their desire for each other is often overwhelming, and the film quietly makes the case that these two are soul mates whether they acknowledge it or not. 

At first glance, “Lost in Translation” seems less subtle. The specifics of Charlotte’s (Scarlett Johansson’s) troubled marriage are shown pretty clearly in the first act, and the budding relationship she develops with Bob (Bill Murray) does indeed culminate in a kiss at the end. The kiss is one of the more controversial parts of the movie, mainly because some viewers see it as explicit confirmation that their relationship was romantic or sexual, when they’d have preferred to see it as a purely emotional one. Others have argued that the kiss is still fairly innocent, and it hardly undermines the rest of the movie’s focus on two lonely people who find a much-needed pure connection during a difficult period in their lives. 

But whereas the kiss might’ve seemed too explicit for some, that final scene also featured one of the more ambiguous moments in the film: when Bob whispers something into Charlotte’s ear. The film makes the bold choice to not tell us what he’s saying, to let this intimate moment be something only the characters are privy to. In a 2022 interview, Coppola offered her take on the final scene, clarifying that she never actually wrote any line for Murray in the script and that he wasn’t whispering any real words on set. As she explained:

“It came from the tradition of Italian movies — they would just say numbers and figure out the dialogue later. [But] then we left it. We never seemed to be able to sum it up. I always liked that Bill Murray says it’s between the two of them. [Everybody] asks what he whispers to her. I just don’t get why it’s such a thing, but I’m touched that people feel connected to it.”

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:45:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:45:00

by | Jul 29, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” sees Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) learning that she is pregnant. She tells her husband Reed (Pedro Pascal), and he is elated — they had been trying for a while — but also struck with trepidation. Both Sue and Reed are superpowered individuals who absorbed an unhealthy dose of cosmic rays on a space voyage many years before, and Reed was worried that their altered DNA would affect the health of their child. All through the first half of “First Steps,” Reed conducts multiple medical tests on the fetus. Also, because Sue can turn invisible, she and Reed are able to look in on the baby directly to visually monitor its development. Reed and Sue also panic as they build cribs and baby-proof their retro-futuristic home.

Sue is nine months pregnant when Earth is visited by an eerie metallic alien from beyond the stars. The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) warns Earth that it has been marked for death; the entire planet is going to be physically consumed by the ever-hungry space deity Galactus (Ralph Ineson). Although on the cusp of labor, Sue treks into space with Reed, Johnny (Jonathan Quinn), and Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to confront Galactus. The confrontation doesn’t go well, and the Fantastic Four have to flee the angered space god in their spaceship, the Silver Surfer on their heels. They escape, Ben has to pilot the ship — slingshot-like — around a neutron star. This, naturally, is when Sue begins going into labor. 

Their baby, Franklin, is born in zero gravity as the ship is fleeing angry aliens. It’s a dramatic start to the baby’s life. 

That wasn’t always the story for “First Steps,” though. According to Shakman, who recently spoke with EW, there was a draft of the script where Franklin was born in the very first scene. He moved it because he felt the birth could be made more dramatic.

There was a draft of First Steps where Franklin was born at the beginning

Sue Storm looking over a crib in a darkened nursery with Reed coming in the door in The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Marvel Studios

Shakman said that Franklin’s birth was, for a large portion of production, the opening salvo of “First Steps.” Shakman shifted it later into the movie not just because he had a great idea for the birth scene itself, but because he felt it would be human — and funny — to see superheroes setting up baby gates and outlet protectors in their super-apartment. In his words: 

“For a long time, the baby was born at the beginning of the movie. […] And then we realized it would be wonderful to see the baby-proofing and the preparation and to see them get ready for the child. So moving Franklin’s birth to the midpoint was something that we decided to do, which also then allowed me to combine it with some of these other moments.”

Not that Franklin’s birth at the beginning of the movie was humdrum. It seems that the film used to open with a spacebound rescue on board a space station. Franklin, in Shakman’s eyes, was always going to be born in space. As he said: 

“Franklin was always born in space [but] he used to be born at a space station rescue at the opening of the movie. So having him born in space while being chased by the Silver Surfer while slingshotting around a neutron star, it just felt like taking the already stressful birth idea and just magnified it by a thousand … a very Fantastic Four thing to do. But also it felt like a nod little bit to ‘2001’ too. This idea of a space baby, he’s got the Power Cosmic, he’s born in space.” 

Franklin isn’t quite the same as the Star Child from Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1968 sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but he did possess an unknown and eerie cosmic force in his little baby body that Galactus recognized as the Power Cosmic. The true meaning of that phrase isn’t explored too deeply in “First Steps,” though, leaving it for any potential sequels. 

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:30:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:30:00

by | Jul 29, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

The first trailer for “Avatar: Fire and Ash” has arrived, and whether you still doubt Jimmy C or you recognize the release of “Fire and Ash” as the biggest cinematic event of 2025, there is plenty to marvel at here — from the sheer spectacle on display and the incredible visuals to the sci-fi designs and everyone’s favorite space whale, Payakan.

At this point, we shouldn’t be surprised when the next “Avatar” film goes ahead and makes a metric ton of cash at the box office like the previous two movies did. Cameron has undeniably captured the world’s attention and our desire for a franchise that takes us to a completely new and unique world (one that’s even led to people being depressed because Pandora isn’t a real place, apparently). Indeed, regardless of whether the “Avatar” movies are constantly being memed or simply talked about, this property has everyone’s attention the moment a new film drops.

When the first “Avatar” movie was released, many comparisons were made to the “Star Wars” franchise, mainly because it’s a very popular sci-fi property boasting ground-breaking visual effects. Cameron made an extremely successful film, sure, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” has affirmed that people wanted more, but this franchise didn’t have what it takes to become a long-lasting, expansive brand like “Star Wars” — until now, that is, with Cameron having informed Empire Magazine that he also has plans to develop a purely animated “Avatar” anthology series.

Animation could allow the Avatar franchise to thrive even further

Kiri looking worried in Avatar: Fire and Ash

20th Century Studios

Speaking to Empire, Cameron confirmed he’s already had talks with Disney about expanding the world of “Avatar” through animation. “I said, ‘Look, I want to do an animated anthology series that’s essentially in the world, but stories that you wouldn’t have expected from that world,'” Cameron explained. “There might even be an animated feature in there — it might be a feature for streaming or a theatrical feature.”

Cameron specifically pointed to the shorts in “The Animatrix” as “great examples for how we can add texture and baroque detail to the world of ‘Avatar,'” as well as how to use an animated spin-off to expand a franchise while also taking advantage of the power of animation to do things live-action — or, in the case of “Avatar,” live-action and CGI — can’t.

This is the key to taking “Avatar” to the next level. It’s one thing for each of the films to break box office records while they’re in theaters, but what about when they’re not? What happens when there are either or no more “Avatar” movies or Cameron stops being the key creative voice behind them? Just as “Star Wars” was able to survive between the release of the original and prequel trilogies thanks to the Expanded Universe (aka Star Wars Legends) of 1980s and ’90s comic books, novels, and video games, “Avatar” can similarly thrive for years to come by expanding into other mediums.

Sure, we already have some of that in the form of official “Avatar” comics, video games (like the recent, and quite decent, “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora”), and a whole canon theme park land at Disney World. Still, an animated anthology — one with the potential of continuing in the future even once the central movies end — has the potential to capture the imagination the same way the films have and ensure “Avatar” can be expansive enough to keep people engaged, even when they don’t have a trailer or movie to anticipate in the near future.

James Cameron can do something truly great here

Varang walking out of a tent in Avatar: Fire and Ash

20th Century Studios

An animated anthology can easily just be forgotten or ignored in the era of streaming and too much TV. Hence, it’s important that an animated “Avatar” anthology offer some truly stunning animation (Cameron may’ve cited “The Animatrix,” but there’s also the more recent “Love, Death + Robots” to consider), on top of stories that feel like truly important pieces of the larger franchise.

Luckily, Cameron is already all over that. As he told Empire, “[An animated ‘Avatar’ anthology could delve into] backstory on characters and tangential stuff that happened off-camera within the movies. Who first landed on Pandora? The first expedition. You could go anywhere you want.”

Now, that all sounds quite delightful and thrilling. Despite what the haters would have you believe, the narrative simplicity of the “Avatar” franchise is a feature and not a bug, allowing its world-building, lore, and mythology to be the real stars. Moreover, we’ve barely scratched the surface of Pandora’s history, cultures, and populations after two films. An animated anthology that showcases vital pieces of Pandoran history — like the first encounters between different species — or reveals more about the different Na’vi clans would make for an essential piece of storytelling, to say the least.

With all that in mind, it’s admittedly still very early days. “We haven’t done much with that yet,” Cameron confessed to Empire, which makes sense seeing as he’s been working on multiple “Avatar” films for years now, in addition to other projects (including, as we recently learned, a horror movie). “We’re still gathering our stories and that sort of thing and I’ve got to find the boutique filmmakers, the animators, that want to do it,” he added.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” will open in theaters on December 19, 2025.

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:20:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-29 17:20:00

by | Jul 29, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s second Captain America, Anthony Mackie appeared in an overlooked Spike Lee TV movie. Lee, of course, is known for movies like “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” and “BlacKkKlansman,” and a filmography that has typically been concerned with themes of race and racism in America. A prolific filmmaker, many of Lee’s movies have earned the director international acclaim and have seen him work with stars such as Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Denzel Washington. Anthony Mackie’s work with Lee took place before the actor was the blockbuster star he is today, though.

Mackie is best known for playing Sam Wilson in the MCU. Originally introduced as the Falcon in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and generally regarded as one of the MCU’s strongest entries, Sam went on to become Captain America after Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) gave up the mantle in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Outside of the MCU, Mackie is known for his roles in the 2008 Iraq war drama, “The Hurt Locker,” and the 2011 thriller, “The Adjustment Bureau.” He has also appeared in two major Netflix sci-fi series, “Altered Carbon” and “Black Mirror,” and is one of the co-leads on Peacock’s “Twisted Metal.” 

In 2004, when Mackie was still a little-known actor, he joined Lee on a surprisingly small-scale project for the director. “Sucker Free City” was a TV movie intended to be the pilot episode for a series that never happened.

Spike Lee cast Anthony Mackie in a crime thriller

Anthony Mackie's K-Luv holding up a CD in Spike Lee's Sucker Free City.

Showtime

Made for Showtime, “Sucker Free City” starred Mackie as gang member K-Luv, alongside Ben Crowley as fraudster and drug dealer Nick Wade, and Ken Leung as Chinese mafia member Lincoln Ma. The film followed the tensions between different gangs in the San Francisco neighborhood of Hunter’s Point. When gentrification forces Nick’s family to relocate to the neighborhood controlled by the V-Dubs gang, Nick is initially harassed by the gang. Things take a turn when K-Luv approaches him for help in bootlegging CDs and negotiating a truce with Lincoln.

Like many of Spike Lee’s movies, “Sucker Free City” focused on race and class tensions, examining the struggles of a working-class American neighborhood. These themes and the film’s approach have led to comparisons to HBO’s “The Wire,” a prestige series in the footsteps of which Lee’s project should have followed. Unfortunately, though, Showtime turned the project down and it never became anything more than a largely overlooked one-off TV movie. The movie screened at the Toronto International Film Festival before being shown on Showtime.

Despite never being picked up for series, the movie has received generally positive reviews. It currently sits at a 69% audience score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, though it has not received enough reviews from critics to form a definitive critic score. It seems likely “Sucker Free City” will remain another hidden gem of Spike Lee’s career.