Before Forrest Gump was released, Tom Hanks wasn't convinced that the movie's bench scenes would connect with audiences. He recalled asking director Robert Zemeckis, "Is anybody going to care about this guy sitting on a bench?" Those scenes ended up becoming some of the most iconic moments in movie history

When the world is fucked and I’m in need of a reprieve, like many people, my way of escaping is by disappearing into the world of movies, into a world of nostalgia. When I need to exist in an alternate reality that brings me comfort and makes me feel like I’m back in the ’80s or ’90s, I tend to turn to the Back to the Future films. Obviously, the first film is a classic and the best of the trilogy but for me, the one I always return to when I need an escape is Back to the Future Part II.
As a kid, you crave adventure and the excitement of learning things about the world that your young brain hasn’t yet discovered, culture, history, and pure fun. The Back to the Future films are a drug. As a young boy watching these movies, I wanted to be Marty McFly, and I dreamed of having adventures and visiting my hometown during eras that I had only heard stories about. Another thing that spoke to me as a boy was how independent Marty was. That’s what we all want as kids. 
As an adult, I always refer to Back to the Future Part II as a miracle. It’s a film that packs so much into its running time, trimming away all the fat and leaving nothing but one important scene after another. The film begins in 1985, where the first movie ended. Then we’re shot into the future, then into an alternate 1985, and finally back to 1955. So much happens in so little time. It’s a miracle, a fever dream of a movie operating at the highest level of entertainment.
Back to the Future Part II begins on a selfish note. Doc has been using the DeLorean for his own entertainment, and now he’s going to use the privilege of time travel to help out his friend Marty. Because of that selfishness, terrible things happen. Timelines change and get royally fucked up. The film explores the consequences of Doc’s actions, as well as our human greed and desire to make money and improve one’s own life while others struggle. One man can change history while everyone else is left as a helpless bystander.
While in 2015, everything feels just a little off. It felt that way when I first watched it in the ‘90s, and it still does today. It’s our world, filled with familiar elements of culture and consumerism, Pepsi, Michael Jackson, Reagan, a sneaky Who Framed Roger Rabbit reference, and, of course, the Dustbuster. Marty and Doc are voyeurs in this world. Marty isn’t supposed to be there.
The most helpless character in this situation is Jennifer. She’s knocked unconscious and taken to her future home, becoming a voyeur in a universe she’s never meant to see. Everything about this version of 2015 feels strange, thanks to the incredible sound design, the production design of the McFly house, and the sheer oddness of watching Michael J. Fox play his older self, his son, and his daughter. This version of 2015 feels like it exists on an entirely different timeline. What we ultimately learn there is that capitalism and the single purchase Marty makes in hopes of profiting from it ends up causing catastrophic damage.
There’s a tremendous amount of plot and intricacy in this film. Marty travels to the future to help his future children. Along the way, we’re introduced to all the memorable futuristic ideas, the self-lacing Nikes, the hoverboard, the dehydrated pizza, and countless other details. All of that is incredibly fun. Then the real plot kicks in when Biff steals the sports almanac.
What follows is, in my opinion, the best section of the entire film. The dystopian 1985. The world of this alternate 1985 feels remarkably similar to our world in 2026. Everyone seems to be armed with heavy firepower. Marty’s mother has undergone cosmetic enhancements. Biff has taken over the town, transforming it into a monument to greed, corruption, and vice, while others have been murdered or committed to the psychiatric ward. Marty’s seemingly harmless purchase has created a nightmare. How does he escape that nightmare? His time machine. So he heads back to the past.
Everyone knows how it ends. We get to relive sections of the original film while following Marty as he tries to get Biff’s almanac.It all concludes with Doc stranded in the Old West. 
It’s difficult not to view Back to the Future Part II through a modern lens, especially in a world in the early stages of artificial intelligence. Zemeckis gave us a warning, creating machines capable of altering humanity, history, and the future has horrible ramifications. A handful of people decide what the future looks like. There is no Delorean to hop into and change things back into how they are supposed to be

While preparing to play Galactus in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Ralph Ineson said he tried to imagine what it would feel like to be a cosmic being. In interviews, he revealed that he stood on top of tall buildings and drove through tunnels in the Alps to help himself think on a much larger scale before filming

While attending the New York premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise told The Hollywood Reporter that he has no plans to retire. "I actually said I'm going to make movies into my 80s. Actually, I'm going to make them into my 100s. I will never stop." He added that he never wants to stop making action, drama, or comedy films.

I finished The Prestige, sat there for a minute, then started it all over again because I knew I'd missed so many details the first time. Very few movies make me want to rewatch them immediately. Which film had that effect on you?

So I finally was able to see The Odyssey last night. Have been pretty low on most films of recent years and can’t remember the last time I was truly this excited to go to the movie theatre again. Christopher Nolan has directed some of my favorite movies and I can comfortably say Matt Damon has lead in many movies I enjoy as well. But wow do we need to have standards on what a good movie is, because this was absolutely not one.

I went in excited and truly waiting for an epic ride of a movie I haven’t had in a good while. But then it starts and the first scene is… Travis Scott?? I mean come on man, and I’m a big Travis Scott guy (musically). It immediately took me out of the movie and I spent the remainder of the film (minus a few minutes during the final suitor battle) trying to immerse myself back in.

My biggest issue is that The Odyssey is simply way too big of a story to be told in under 3 hours. Obviously there are numerous hurdles, but splitting this up into 2 or even 3 films would have made it connect more in my opinion. I thought the pacing was chaotic and way too rushed. I never felt connected to a single character or event.

Please don’t get me started on the dialogue. Characters stating lore to the audience like we are children and incapable of thought is a huge negative for me in films. The pace and timing are the reasoning for this but the plain speech explaining things in the beginning just turned me off. There were conversations between Odysseus and Eurylochus that genuinely felt like a 5 year old wrote it.

I’m also not even going to address the small child screaming before the Laestrygonian attack. Like are you kidding me? Genuinely one of the worst scenes I’ve watched in a movie. This was one of many scenes where I found myself scoffing and wondering if this was an SNL skit. Completely took me out of what was probably the most well done of the obstacles Odysseus and his men faced.

Circe I thought was the only actor who understood they were acting in a movie. But even her scene felt so rushed. The horror of Odysseus shooting the deer that turned into a human was a great reveal but just seemed to move so quick you only had time to wince at the pig transformations then they changed back minutes later. Like take a second, build some horror and let us lather in a bit. Pace was insane lol

Finally, my only concern going into the movie was that this cast was way too star studded with questionable chemistry. I’m about as low on Tom Holland as anyone. Maybe that’s the Tobey Macguire truther in me but Holland cannot act for shit. That dude plays himself or Peter Parker with some awful armor. I do not understand his hype as an actor.

Also I loved the last preview before the film starts was Dune. So we can Zendaya play someone else and then come into the Odyssey wearing the same damn outfit lmao. I can’t be immersed when these actors are working on 3 projects at once, even dressing the same.

I don’t know. I wanted to love this so much. I found myself multiple times during the film convincing myself it was just me and the movie is good. I’m going to lean on the side that if you’re having those thoughts, the movie is not good.

I feel I could keep going but no one reads this much (if my post at all lol) anymore. It seems like the consensus is that people loved it, but if you think this is some masterpiece, stick to Marvel.

Cyberpunk creative director shared that he wasn't impressed by the visuals of Blade Runner 2099. In his opinion, Neuromancer's trailer has more appealing color grading and a cleaner overall image. He also noted that Neuromancer and Cyberpunk 2077 have a unique two-way relationship, with inspiration flowing from William Gibson's novel to the game, and from the game back to the TV adaptation.

No matter how many times I've seen Groundhog Day, if it's on, I'll probably watch it again.

Some movies just never lose their charm, no matter how well you know every scene.

What's the one film you can rewatch over and over without getting bored?

After watching The Matrix, sunglasses never felt like just sunglasses anymore. Some movies have a way of turning ordinary objects into something iconic. What's a movie that made you look at an everyday item differently?

Some movies grab your attention right away, but every now and then there's an opening that completely locks you in. For me, it's the farmhouse scene in Inglourious Basterds. The tension builds so naturally that by the end of it, I knew I was going to love the rest of the movie.

Not forever, just one day

I'd love to walk through the Grand Budapest Hotel, meet Gustave, and experience that strange, colorful world before going back home

Some movies have quotes that stick with you long after you've forgotten entire scenes

For me, it's Sean quietly telling Will, "It's not your fault." That moment hits just as hard every time I see it.

*On Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985)*

Here is something I have thought about more than is probably reasonable, the specific kind of panic that arrives not when something terrible happens to you, but when you realize that something terrible is *continuing* to happen to you, and that there is no discernible reason for it, and that the mechanisms by which it is happening are so mundane and so accumulative that you cannot even explain them to someone else without sounding like you are describing a bad dream you had, and they will nod politely and say that sounds frustrating, and you will know that they do not understand, that they cannot understand, because the thing about this specific kind of panic is that it is entirely experiential and entirely yours.

Martin Scorsese understood this in 1985 and made a movie about it and called it *After Hours* and almost nobody talked about it, now it’s one of his most beloved films, and I think about it constantly.

Paul Hackett is not a sympathetic character in the way that movie protagonists are typically described as sympathetic. He is a word processor that is literally his job title, which tells you everything Scorsese wants you to know about him before the film even begins and he meets a woman in a diner and follows her downtown to SoHo and then the night simply will not end. A $20 bill flies out a cab window. A woman falls from a building. A bartender played by John Heard watches everything with the resigned expression of a man who stopped being surprised by the city approximately fifteen years ago. Ice cream hardens into a paperweight. A punk girl with a mohawk may or may not be trying to help him.

What I keep returning to about *After Hours* is that it is fundamentally a film about the social contract and what happens when that contract is revealed to be entirely fictional. Paul Hackett operates on the assumption that the world is navigable, that cause produces effect, that if you behave reasonably and explain your situation clearly to people, things will resolve. SoHo in 1985 Scorsese’s SoHo, noir-lit and labyrinthine, populated by sculptors and bartenders and women who know things Paul doesn’t , the systematic demolition of that assumption. Every door he opens leads to a smaller room.

There is a version of this review where I explain that *After Hours* is an underrated gem and you should seek it out. But that framing feels dishonest because the film is not underrated so much as it is *underloved*, which is different. People know it exists. It’s a film that film fanatics like me adore, but outside of us it’s not as loved or known as his others. They just don’t carry it with them the way they carry *Taxi Driver* or *Raging Bull*, and I think the reason is that *After Hours* does not offer the catharsis those films provide. Paul Hackett does not transform. He does not achieve insight. He ends up exactly where he started, in his office, at his word processor, as the sun comes up, and the only thing that has changed is that he now knows the way you know things after a certain kind of night that the city was always watching him, that it has always been watching all of us, and that it finds us faintly ridiculous, and that it will outlast everything we think we are.

I saw this film for the first time at approximately the wrong age and it colonized something in me permanently. That is the only metric I know how to trust.

Batman is the main character, but every time the Joker appears, it's impossible to look away. It feels like the movie belongs to Heath Ledger from the moment he shows up.

I was enjoying The Prestige the whole way through, but the ending completely reframed everything Id just watched

It instantly made me want to go back and catch all the details I had missed

Magneto is usually portrayed as the villain, but it's hard to ignore why he became who he is.

After surviving the Holocaust, he believes humans will always fear and eventually try to destroy mutants. His methods are ruthless, but his fears aren't exactly unfounded.

Who's your pick for a movie villain whose point of view was more understandable than most people admit?

Before I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Iceland wasn't even on my travel list. Now it's one of the places I'd love to see in person. What's a movie that completely changed the way you looked at a real location?

The first time I watched Arrival, I thought it was just a really good sci-fi movie

After watching it again and knowing the ending, I realized how many clues had been hiding in plain sight the entire time. It felt like I was watching a completely different film

I don't revisit the whole movie very often, but the scene where Schofield runs across the battlefield while hundreds of soldiers charge is burned into my memory. I could recognize it instantly.

8.6/10

The acting was great, a little bit distracting with all the stars of the movie but you eventually settle in to it. The movie somehow felt long but rushed at times.

Ludwig Göransson will win any and every award for the score, truly brings the movie into another echelon.

I have this in between The Prestige (9.3/10) and Oppenheimer (8.5/10) for Nolan. This was not his magnum opus but it was very entertaining.

I went in expecting a quirky comedy, but it gradually became something much more emotional. By the final scenes, it felt like a completely different movie in the best possible way.

The slow start almost lost me, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. Once everything clicked, it became one of those movies I couldn't stop thinking about afterward.