Charles Bramesco

This week’s most high-profile release is the big Power Rangers reboot (I’m sorry, that’s Haim Saban‘s Power Rangers, please nobody sue me) and the earliest round of reviews has begun to surface over the past few day or so. They are, to put it somewhat charitably, mixed. The early consensus is that the film squanders what could have been remake-ready material — a multiethnic group of telegenic teens working together to form a gigantic robot that battles evil aliens sounds like a pretty hard concept to foul up — with a generic and often painfully unfunny take.

Did you know that they apparently made another Terminator movie in 2015? Despite having seen it in theaters back during its original run, this still strikes me as new, hard-to-believe information. If there was really a new installment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s popular sci-fi/action franchise as recently as two years ago, wouldn’t someone remember that? Wikipedia claims that the film (subtitled Genisys, which sounds fake but okay) attempted to launch Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke’s big-screen phase of her career, included a clutch starring role from Ahnuld himself, and earned the second-most of any entry in the series. Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty major occurrence to have entirely fled the public‘s collective pop-cultural memory. I’m skeptical — does this look like a real movie to you?

Donald Trump incited widespread panic among his many detractors when he first elbowed his way into the American presidency back in November. But even as matters got bleaker and bleaker, some tried to find a silver lining in the notion that a slide into fascism would at least yield some good ‘n’ furious protest art. Little did we know that the most searing indictment of Trump and his policies had already been scripted, completed, and released months before the noted reality TV star took office. I am referring, of course, to the complex political allegory Finding Dory.

Among the most difficult aspects of parenting is the matter of simply filling the hours in a day. Kids become bored after approximately twenty unstimulating minutes, so moms and dads have to constantly plan out diversions to keep their offspring occupied. Disney just did the parents of America a real solid, however. Animated movies have long been a go-to option for parents hoping to run out the clock, and they’ll be able to go back to Moana for seconds later this month, when the film re-enters theaters for a one-day sing-along engagement.

It’s the inevitable question money-minded executives must ask when an original movie musical starts to gain traction with the general public: “So,” he asks, bitten-down cigar chomped between his teeth, “we taking this thing to Broadway or what?”

At the Golden Globes on Sunday night, both Jenna Bush and Michael Keaton made the embarrassing faux pas of conflating new releases Hidden Figures and Fences into the single title Hidden Fences. It’s an easy enough mistake to make — when there are a whopping two movies featuring black ensembles in theaters at the same time, who can expect anyone to keep them straight, least of all people whose one job revolves around the ability to keep them straight? It was a real foot-in-mouth moment for both celebrities, reflective of the minimal attention that white audiences pay to film championing black performers and creators.

J.J. Abrams made his bed, stuffed it with money and gold bricks, but now he‘d rather not lie in it. The director has risen to the top of Hollywood’s most-wanted list in recent years as a serviceable conductor of franchise pictures; he did right by the Mission: Impossible series, then moved on to mount the massive Star Trek resurgence, and brought Star Wars back to the grateful people of Earth with Episode VII. But this whole money-in-the-bank reputation comes with its downsides. Speaking with People, Abrams indicated that he‘s had his fill of franchise pictures and would prefer to explore some original concepts in the years to come.

The Emma Watson-led Beauty and the Beast will come to theaters in a couple months’ time, but the cover version of the song as old as time needs to keep anticipation high until then. Watson did her part on Twitter earlier today by posting the first look at the latest theatrical poster for the live-action adaptation of Disney’s landmark animated film, perhaps the high-water mark of the Second Coming in the ‘90s. The new poster acts as an informal roll call for the new faces of this classic tale, including all the famous faces lending their likenesses to the film in one splashy design.

More streaming services than you can shake a virtual stick at have cropped up over the past year, which makes it all the more aggravating when that one movie you want to watch is nowhere to be found. You shell out every month for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Shudder, Filmstruck and a dozen more, and yet once that craving to rewatch The Lion King hits, you’re plum out of luck. What’s the point of having countless hours of programming at your fingertips for your immediate enjoyment if that doesn’t include The Little Mermaid?

A longtime boon to children looking to placate mothers who wish they’d read more, the Captain Underpants series of chapter books was the pinnacle of toilet humor to kids in the ’90s and early ’00s. Over 12 books and three spin-offs, author Dav Pilkey generated gaggles of giggles with the superheroic adventures of a crimefighter clad only in a red cape and tightened whiteys, who used a plunger in his unending battle against bathroom-appropriate crime. Such nefarious villains as Doctor Diaper, the Turbo Toilet 2000, and Professor Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants (a phrase I like to imagine executives at 20th Century Fox saying out loud, usually while seated at a long conference table) all crossed paths with the minimally-clothed defender of truth, justice, and excretive freedoms.

Space is terrifying; at this point, that much is beyond debate. All people do there is die! (And make game-changing scientific discoveries, sure, but at what cost?) Space tried to murder Sandra Bullock in Gravity, it came back for Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, and that’s not even counting all the space-set films that are supposed to be horrifying. None moreso than Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien, back in the news these days due to its upcoming sequel Alien: Covenant, the trailer for which made for a primo excuse to leave the dinner table and its various political arguments this Christmas night.

We were all so busy scrambling to avert one apocalypse today, we didn’t even see another one rearing its head in the distance. SlashFilm recently spoke to power-producer David Heyman at the junket for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and questioned the Hollywood player about the plans for Warner Bros.’ impending Willy Wonka film. Without making any concrete announcements about what to expect from the early-in-development project, Heyman did drop one rather ominous prophecy when asked whether the script would be a remake of the popular Gene Wilder-starring film or the Tim Burton-directed version.