Oppenheimer from the inside, Argylle review, and more from the week in film

I’m an IMAX projectionist. Here’s what running Oppenheimer was like during the Barbenheimer phenomenon

It’s astonishing that Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic about the scientist who helped create the Atomic Bomb, raked in almost $1 billion at the box office and became the third highest-grossing film of 2023. But perhaps more remarkable is the role the film played in the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer, which drove the U.S. box office to a post-pandemic record last year—a feat I bore witness to as an IMAX projectionist at the most iconic movie theater in the world, Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre. Read More

Argylle review: Matthew Vaughn’s meta-spy action comedy is overstuffed and exhausting

There’s a blinking humor laced throughout Matthew Vaughn’s latest spy action comedy, Argylle. Not winking—although, there are moments when it playfully nudges us to scoff and marvel at its own knowingness—but blinking. As in, blinking becomes a key way in which the film telegraphs some of its most presumably hilarious moments: one moment you see the setup of a visual gag, and then blink you see its punchline. Used once it’s a great gimmick, but as with all things Argylle, such comedic mechanics are used and overused ad nauseam, to the point that they start losing their impact. Read More

How To Have Sex review: A spellbinding tale of sex and consent

How To Have Sex made a big splash last May at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Un Certain Regard prize at the prestigious event. Since then the film has been making the rounds on the festival circuit—including just this month at Sundance—and had a successful release in its home country, the United Kingdom. It was also nominated and won some year-end awards from critics and industry across the pond. Now How To Have Sex finally it makes its debut in the U.S., and audiences here can get to know why this film has been much celebrated so far. Read More

Orion And The Dark review: Charlie Kaufman pens a kid flick?

The notion of an animated feature for children written by Charlie Kaufman, the anxiety-riddled scribe of metaphysical nesting-doll movies like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, sounds about as unlikely as a G-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch, or Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor composing a Pixar score. Yet those things did happen, to acclaim aplenty, and now, so has this. Orion And The Dark may look almost nothing like any Charlie Kaufman film to date, but it bears his personality. While that might be a bit much for the youngest kids, for 11-year-olds like those depicted in this story, it may strike a chord simply by refusing to underestimate their intelligence. Read More

Liam Neeson: The undisputed king of winter movie season

The winter movie season is often a time of treasure to trash. It begins with a progressively lavish banquet of prestigious awards hopefuls and holiday event films, then peters out as January approaches and the studios offload their castoffs and leftovers into theaters amid rock-bottom expectations (although there are exceptions). It takes a special kind of actor—someone with “a very particular set of skills,” perhaps—to be able to span the range of these movies successfully, and Liam Neeson has the goods. Read More

February 2024 film preview: New movies from J. Lo, a Coen brother, and Diablo Cody

January may be in the rearview, but movie theaters are still waiting for studios to replenish their screens. Things aren’t looking much better this February. However, we here at The A.V. Club aren’t going to sit back and watch our readers waste their free time all month. We’ve picked out an eclectic mix of releases from across the Hollywood landscape: Blockbusters, indies, and international movies are on the horizon, plus a little CGI cat in a backpack that people can’t stop talking about. Read More

Fitting In review: Maddie Ziegler charms in a journey of unconventional sexual discovery

Adolescence is a tough time for just about everyone, and finding out that you’re different from your peers can only make that time worse. This is half of the wordplay inherent in the title of writer-director Molly McGlynn’s semi-autobiographical film Fitting In, wherein she examines a very personal struggle she had in being diagnosed with a rare reproductive condition in her teenage years. Though not without its rough edges, McGlynn’s film is emotionally raw and willing to engage with the complexities and nuances of her situation, providing a fascinating look at the intersectionality of burgeoning womanhood, intersex identity, and messy sexuality that doesn’t adhere to rigid or widely acknowledged labels. Read More

11 movies to check out on Netflix this February

This February, Netflix adds a Best Picture Oscar winner, a Ti West horror movie with a sequel arriving later this year, and Tyler Perry’s latest movie. The surreal Everything Everywhere All At Once won several Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan). The Ti West movie X starring Mia Goth and Jenna Ortega is something horror fans will want to check out before the sequel MaXXXine drops later this year. There is also Tyler Perry’s new legal thriller Mea Culpa starring Kelly Rowland. Other movies added to Netflix’s streaming library in February 2024 include Code 8: Part II, It, Pacific Rim, Southpaw, and the streaming debut of the Britney Spears flick Crossroads. Read More

Let rom-com leading men be attainably hot again

A mere 15 seconds into the first, very confusing teaser trailer for Anyone But You—the fizzy romantic comedy starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney as frenemies-turned-fake-lovers—it was clear that Powell’s Ben would be a specific kind of rom-com leading man: the ridiculously, life-ruining-ly hot kind. Flexing off the side of a sailboat wearing nothing but swim trunks with a Paul Mescal-approved inseam and an ungodly amount of abs, Powell’s blatant Men’s Health-cover hotness wasn’t just perfectly matched by Sweeney’s own blonde-and-busty sex appeal, but it was also a signal that this was a rom-com that was trading in the aspirational, not the attainable. Read More

An ode to those surprisingly resilient January horror films

The grimmest month of the year, January brings almost nothing in terms of new entertainment. The gaming and music industries stop dead to let our wallets regain a bit of heft, while most of us eschew theater seats, either to stay warm indoors, return to work and school, or try and get fit before inevitably giving up in February anyway. But where horror fans are concerned, there have been some diamonds in this dumpster fire of culture over the years. Read More