Matthew Monagle

One of my favorite things about the Fast and the Furious franchise is how it seems to have supplanted the James Bond series as the premiere summer destination for globe-trotting adventures. High-tech gadgets, mysterious government agencies, and gratuitous explosions abound; just around the time that Daniel Craig’s Bond franchise was becoming unbearably grim, Vin Diesel’s Fast and the Furious franchise leaned into its retro Bond vibe, undoubtedly aided by a cohesion at the production level. With Diesel serving as series architect, Chris Morgan writing each movie, and Justin Lin the steady hand behind the camera, the movies promised and delivered some high-caliber action.

With a handful of major Hollywood stars choosing to speak out on behalf of gender pay equality in Hollywood, we’ve been treated to an unprecedented amount of transparency over these past few years. Major stars like Jessica Chastain, Keira Knightley, and Jessica Lawrence have all spoken out publicly about their own negative experiences on Hollywood franchises, and each passing week, more stars are encouraged to share their own experiences. Through it all, one important theme has emerged: in many of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, female actors are not being paid as much as men.

When you create a series of films as magical as the Pixar universe, you’re going to get your share of fans trying to puzzle your history out. That’s always been the case with movies like Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Since each movie often features easter eggs that hint at the interconnected nature of each film, people have gone to great lengths to try and understand the elements of the movies not explicitly stated onscreen. Take, for instance, this past week’s video about the tragic story of Andy’s father in Toy Story. According to the host , Woody actually belonged to Andy’s father, who sadly passed away from complications due to polio before the first film. The video caught the internet by storm and was widely circulated over the weekend by most major entertainment sites.

Look, I’m no stranger to college acapella groups. When I was an undergraduate, a ragtag group of choir kids — myself most definitely included  —  organized the first men’s acapella group in the modern history of the university, and a quick Google search shows that the group is still alive and well to this day (no, I won’t tell you the name of the university or the name of the ensemble, so don’t bother asking). So am I pretty much as cool and influential as the Bellas in the Pitch Perfect movie series? Why, yes. I’d like to think so, yes.

This is kind of a necessary evil of the film criticism industry: now that Edgar Wright has a new movie in theaters  —  Baby Driver is really fun! You should go see it!  —  it was only a matter of time before someone asked the director for clarification on his decision to leave Marvel’s Ant-Man. In hindsight, Wright was always something of an odd choice for a Marvel movie. A visionary and idiosyncratic filmmaker, Wright was probably always a bad meeting away from the fabled “creative differences” dissolution, and when he left the project in 2014, fans were upset but not exactly surprised. Therefore, someone was always going to ask Wright during a Baby Driver interview to explain his decision to leave the film.

It’s a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the world, which means it’s time for your weekend box office updates! While this was a disappointing weekend overall for a handful of new releases, there’s good news to be had: after a disappointing $144 million total gross last weekend, the box office bounced back to $187 million total over the past few days. That takes some of the pressure off Wonder Woman to, you know, save the summer blockbuster as we know it. Here’s the totals as of Sunday afternoon:

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Deadpool 2 is officially underway! Even though we’ve spent more than a year analyzing and talking about Ryan Reynolds’ merc with a mouth, the success of the original Deadpool movie is still kinda hard to believe. A $58 million R-rated superhero movie that went on to gross $780 million worldwide? A comic book movie that broke the mold so thoroughly that now every major studio is openly courting the R-rated crowd? Deadpool was a phenomenon, and none of us can wait to see if Reynolds and company are capable of avoiding the sophomore slump.

While most fans walked away from Universal’s Fate of the Furious impressed by the movie’s use of New York City, it was the film’s use of Cuba that really opened the eyes of American audiences. Back in April, Variety sat down with Fate of the Furious director F. Gary Gray and discussed what it was like to be one of the first major studio films to be shot on location in Cuba. Gray recalled several logistical challenges  —  hotel rooms, location shoots, and the like  —  while also complimenting the people they had met on their trip. By all accounts, Fate of the Furious was to be the film that opened up the Cuban film market to the broader Hollywood community.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Sin City is about to become a television series. Back in 2013, Bob Weinstein of The Weinstein Company made headlines by saying that his company had plans for a television series set in the Sin City universe that would bring back both Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller in some capacity. And while that didn’t exactly pan out the way that the Weinsteins hoped, that project was apparently more asleep than dead, because the news broke today that The Weinstein Company has all their ducks in a row for a Sin City series.

Look, I’m a pretty simple guy. I don’t ask for a lot out of life. Life doesn’t ask for a lot out of me. But I do have one very small goal, and that’s to eventually do something well enough that a bunch of colleges around the United States decide to praise me with honorary doctorate degrees. A pretty modest aim, right? One pithy news article about Star Wars rumors, and suddenly, the University of Southern California and UCLA are competing to see who can give me the most pieces of paper with my name on it. In the immortal words of Cannibal! The Musical, that’s all I’m asking for.

Behold, the gag reel. Long a staple of the home video market, the gag reel was perhaps at its most popular in the 1990s, when Jackie Chan released a string of movies that included painful outtakes during the closing credits. When studios realized that they could package an entire DVD release around the special feature menu, the gag reel became a mainstay of any comedy releases over the last 15 years. And because Deadpool was one big improvised joke with enough physical humor to make Mel Brooks blush, it was a natural fit for the film’s Blu-ray release as well.

Now that’s how you celebrate Mother’s Day. Earlier today, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky shared the first poster for mother!, his new horror/thriller featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. With an angelic expression on Lawerence’s face in the above excerpt, you might be forgiven for thinking that this poster is a kind and gentle teaser for a movie that is more creepy than graphic. Well, by all means, don’t let me stop you from scrolling down to reveal the full horrifying artwork on the mother! poster below.