Charles Bramesco

The director called for a more comprehensive definition of what female characters can be.

Spider-Man’s a true New Yorker: he understands when to take the 6 train versus rolling the dice on the 2nd Avenue subway, he knows where to get the Bronx’s best chopped cheese, and when he needs a snack in a pinch, he hits up his friendly neighborhood bodega. In the latest promotional spot for the umpteenth reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, the web-head is late to a big NBA Finals watching party at Tony Stark’s place. (The commercial was written to air specifically during the basketball playoffs this year.) But when he ducks into a nearby bodega — for those uninitiated, it’s really just a corner convenience store, but immeasurably better in every way — he has a chance encounter.

Sex with movies — until now, it’s been an impossible dream. But Netflix is a company of innovation, and they’re not going to stop at reshaping the home-entertainment industry top to bottom. Much ruckus was raised recently when Netflix announced that they would do away with their widely reviled star ratings and switch to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system for recommendations, but a new video from the streaming giant released today clarifies the nature of this new recommendations engine. At long last, we can decide which movies we want to do it with, as if the film industry was one big textual Tinder. And that’s not my comparison, either — Netflix wants you to think of this like a dating app!

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.

I‘ve never seen 75 million dollars. It’s more than I have ever had, will ever have, and in all likelihood, more than I will cumulatively earn over the course of my entire life. I can’t really even conceive of how much money that is, the buying power it represents. So the news that Ben Affleck singlehandedly lost $75,000,000 for Warner Bros. with his pricy and apparently unappealing Live By Night has been kind of hard to process. Why doesn’t he have to go to jail? How is he allowed to continue directing movies? This defies all the laws of Monopoly, my lone primer on the ins and outs of macroeconomics.

The last time was saw Jack Nicholson on the big screen was 2010, in James L. Brooks’ middling dramedy How Do You Know. He played a weaselly white-collar crook who asks his son to take the rap for a crime he committed, in a performance characterized by the usual Nicholsonian deviousness. The movie didn’t make too much of a splash, forgotten after a few weeks taking up space in cineplexes. That film may take on an unexpected tragic air in light of the breaking news that it may contain Nicholson’s swan song.

Schwing! Party time! Excellent! We‘re not worthy, we’re not worthy!

The world’s still stinging from the loss of Carrie Fisher yesterday, and while we will most likely remember her first as Princess Leia, the actress cultivated a long career of comedy after her Star Wars years. Her one-woman show Wishful Drinking was a must-see on Broadway, and her hilarious, often inscrutable Twitter account will stand as a testament to her bizarre wit. In the wake of Fisher’s sad death on Tuesday, one video in particular has begun to pop up again, and it might just be the comic’s most searing public appearance of all.

For gentiles far and wide, yesterday was a day of rest and relaxation; Henry Cavill spent it making headlines. Today brings a twofer of Super-news in the post-Christmas lull:

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.