The Blu Spot

The Film: In the pantheon of films with shocking endings, you'd no doubt find many of the usual suspects, such as "The Sixth Sense," the original "Planet of the Apes," "Psycho," and, ironically, "The Usual Suspects." Another that you'd very likely see on that list is Richard Fleischer's 1973 classic dystopian thriller "Soylent Green" (Based on the novel "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison), starring Oscar winner Charlton Heston and Honorary Oscar recipient Edward G. Rob

The Film: Five years ago, Warner Bros. attempted to reboot the "Mortal Kombat" film series with a new cast & creative team, the result of which was a rather misguided take on the material that got bogged down in training montages and seemed to forget that there was supposed to be a tournament involved. However, that only ended up being part of the film's problems as its release was delayed a few months due to COVID, eventually getting released when theaters were still struggl

The Film: Earlier this year, a little film with the bizarre title of "Is God Is," based on the acclaimed 2008 Off-Broadway play of the same name by Aleshea Harris, landed in theaters to a rather fascinating split reaction between critics and audiences. The former praised it for the most part, while the latter had a far more mixed reaction, that is, from the very few that went to see it. Despite being in a decent amount of theaters, the film was only able to garner about $5 mi

The Film: Over the course of nearly 80 years, there have been several dozen films dedicated to the popular adventurer Sinbad the Sailor, as originally featured in "One Thousand and One Nights," but it's probably more than fair to say that none have been quite as popular as the trilogy of pictures from Columbia that featured the incredible stop motion animation ("Dynamation") of the great Ray Harryhausen. The first of these films, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," is considered one

The Film: It really is quite amazing that it took this long for there to finally be a biopic about one of the most legendary music icons who ever lived. Sure, there had been a few TV documentaries about Michael Jackson over the years, but somehow we had never gotten a big budget, theatrical film about the King of Pop until now. It's hard to imagine the intense pressure of trying to get something like that right, knowing full-well that millions of fans around the world are cla

The Film: Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who has brought us such classics as "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "Erin Brockovich," and "Traffic," has been going through a bit of a dry spell lately. His last three outings have included the poorly-received "Magic Mike's Last Dance," the bland haunted house drama "Presence," and "Black Bag," a spy thriller that was more interested in being clever than it was in telling a compelling story. It's been unfortunate to see him st

The Film: It's been quite a while since we've heard from acclaimed filmmaker Gus Van Sant, whose past works include great films like "Good Will Hunting" and "Milk." His last project, "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot," came out all the way back in 2018, receiving mixed reviews and coming & going without making much of a splash, but at long last he's returned with his latest feature, the real-life crime thriller "Dead Man's Wire." Will this rendition of an actual hostage

The Film: It seems like every year or two, a horror film comes along that gets everyone really riled up, causing critics to shower it with praise and act like it's one of the greatest things to come along in the genre for quite some time. The problem is, at least within the last several years, these films typically don't live up to the insane hype heaped upon them, making it seem like those doing the raving were simply too easily impressed by what they saw. This year, the fil

The Film: Like most of the classic monsters of the '30s, "The Mummy" is one that's been done to death over the subsequent decades, with highlights including the original Boris Karloff classic (which is more of a melodrama than a horror film), the 1959 Hammer film with Sir Christopher Lee, the action-filled 1999 rendition with Brendan Fraser, and the 2017 outing with Tom Cruise, which was such a disaster that it killed an entire planned universe of films before it could even g

The Television Academy has just finished announcing the nominations for the 78th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, with "The Pitt" leading the way with 25 nods, followed very closely by "Hacks" with 24. The ceremony will take place on September 14th. You can find a list of the nominations for the main categories below and a complete listing of all categories here. Outstanding Drama Series The Diplomat The Gilded Age A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Paradise The Pitt Pluribus Slow H