<p>James Mangold's 2017 superhero film "Logan" is unique within the genre for the simple fact that it ends. </p> <p>Inspired by the Mark Millar and Steve McNiven comic book series "Old Man Logan," Mangold's film takes place in a future of the X-Men universe wherein the man once known as Wolverine has grown into a scarred, defeated, sad, kind of pathetic elderly man. Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is pushing 100 and is losing control of his psychic powers, and Logan (Hugh Jackman) can no longer heal quickly. Both Read More

<p dir="">When you look at the sprawling ensemble that is "Downton Abbey," it can be easy to lose track of all of these characters, especially when you're having to alternate between the aristocratic Crawley family and their downstairs staff. But series creator/writer Julian Fellowes ("The Gilded Age") has done a great job of giving both clusters equal attention, as the show hops from one character's plotline to the next. Of course, the breadth of a television show with six seasons allows ample time to make sure no one Read More

<p>When Alfonso Cuarón was announced as the director of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" in 2002, it was a bit of a bold choice. The director of the first two films, Chris Columbus, delivered safe and dependable work. "The Sorcerer's Stone" and "Chamber of Secrets" were both perfectly competent adaptations, if not necessarily ones that blew us away with the camerawork.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Alfonso Cuarón was not as interested in giving us a faithful adaptation as his predecessor. The very first scene Read More

<p>In Marvel comics, the character of Venom was, functionally, Spider-Man's evil twin. The mythology surrounding Venom was far more complex (Venom is, in fact, a living mass of intelligent shapeshifting glop that creates a biologically symbiotic relationship with a host and mutates to resemble its host's clothes/costume. The glop once lived in Spider-Man's body, but eventually moved into the body of Peter Parker's rival Eddie Brock), but aesthetically, Venom is little more than "evil Spider-Man." When on the outside of its host, the glop resembles a towering, muscular man coated Read More

<p dir="">No single Hollywood filmmaker did more to mythologize America's manifest destiny than John Ford. His Westerns, typically shot in tandem with a larger-than-life John Wayne, told two-fisted tales of hard men who braved attacks from outlaws and resistance from indigenous people to bring a European notion of civilization to a supposedly untamed land. Technically speaking, he played a crucial role in codifying the grammar of visual storytelling (everything you ever need to know about the basics of camera placement and mise-en-scène are on display in his films), but it's really his Read More

<p dir="">1992's "Unforgiven" often finds itself ranked highly on many best Western films of all time lists. Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and set in the 1880s, the film follows William Munny (Eastwood), a retired gunslinger-turned-widowed father and farmer. He takes one final job to collect a bounty on the deaths of two unscrupulous cowboys placed on them by a group of sex workers after the men sliced up one their faces. The film, along with 1990's "Dances with Wolves," helped breathe new life into a genre that had practically Read More

<p dir="">"Toy Story" is a landmark in animation that forever changed the landscape of the medium. The first feature-length film of its kind, the computer animated "Toy Story" helped to break new ground while also delivering a film with a heartwarming story. But as an innovative benchmark in animation, "Toy Story" had plenty of hurdles to overcome. Along with a production process that saw various changes in the story, the film had an almost complete re-write that made key changes to one of the film's primary characters.</Read More