Cregger’s spectacular ‘Resident Evil’ is the new template for video game movies

Posted on September 19, 2026 by reelentropy
There’s no scene remotely like this anywhere else in cinema, and you could say that several times in Resident Evil. Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I’m on record for needing more out of writer/director/producer Zach Cregger, and here it is! Resident Evil is the kind of film that silences any doubts about a creator, a straightforward, thoroughly satisfying thriller that demonstrates mastery over not only multiple different genres, but also how to translate ideas into film. We could look back on this in 20 years as a codex for video game adaptation because it makes this translation look so simple.

Raccoon City, winter, contemporary- at the end of a long night, medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) is called into the mountains on an urgent delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. He stumbles on, and must fight his way into the heart of, a burgeoning zombie apocalypse.

Cregger has been almost too eager to clarify that this is a story he already wanted to tell with “Resident Evil” lore and monster designs stacked on top. However much this was written or rewritten around the franchise, what we end up watching is something tailor-made to bridge the gap between film and video game experiences.

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Sony-Man: New Day for the Brand

Posted on August 14, 2026 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

It is now seven years into the post-Endgame era of the MCU. In 2019, the epic crossover that had just dammed more than a decade of buildup with one of the biggest cliffhangers of all time let loose with a $357.1 million opening weekend haul, beating the previous record-holder, its direct predecessor Avengers: Infinity War, by almost exactly $100 million. This was the third out of four mainline Avengers movies to reset this record – the first Avengers film was the first movie ever to open at more than $200 million way back in 2012, beating the eighth Harry Potter movie by almost $40 million – and the last two did a Super-Mario style double-jump on it at the end.

It is now two weeks into the era of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which barely squeaked past Endgame with a $360.1 million opening weekend haul.

Wait – what?

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Nolan brings recent hot streak home in ‘Odyssey’

Posted on July 17, 2026 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

As if a vison from the gods themselves, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has made landfall, a moment in some ways 25 years, in other ways 2,500 years, in the making.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, 12th Century B.C.- 20 years after leaving for the Trojan War, 10 years after winning that war, Odysseus (Matt Damon), King of Ithaca, cannot get home. His wife and son Penelope and Telemachus (Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland) spend years at the mercy of hundreds of suitors who will not leave their palace, deliberately abusing Greek hospitality customs and wasting his fortune in hopes of forcing Penelope to take one of them in marriage. Lost in a haze under the care of the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), Odysseus slowly regains his memory of the war and his doomed voyage home.

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‘Carolina Caroline’ and that magical indie feeling

Posted on June 8, 2026 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Magnolia Pictures.

Carolina Caroline, a Southern Gothic erotic crime thriller that’s emerged into the summer dumping grounds of TIFF ’25 onto a very small number of screens, feels ripped from the Classical Hollywood era and re-equipped with modern tools and modern sensibilities as to what can be depicted onscreen. It’s far from what you’d call original, but its execution is transcendent.

Texas – Caroline Daniels (Samara Weaving), stuck working her father’s small-town gas station, is swept off her feet by professional criminal Oliver Anderson (Kyle Gallner). The pair sets off to South Carolina to confront Daniels’ walkout mother, robbing small-town banks as they go.  

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The exhausted ‘Star Wars’ of the ‘20s

Posted on May 26, 2026 by reelentropy
Classic ’80s poster art betrays both the love of genre and franchise history, but also a general lack of showstopping visuals. Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

“The Mandalorian” arrived on computer screens in 2019 a smash hit, by far the most anticipated launch series for Disney+ and a beacon of hope for antsy Star Wars fans six years into Disney’s ownership of the property. Disney’s shift to a streaming-first business, as well as its potential to realize the promise of turning a galaxy far, far away into a setting for consistent and varied media, was riding on this, and it was everything anyone could have hoped for – a bare-bones episodic space Western with Jon Favreau, a lifelong Star Wars fan-turned filmmaker, showing everyone what he loves about the property.

One pandemic and double-strike later, The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives on IMAX screens in 2026 the first Star Wars film in seven years – the promise when Disney bought the property was a new Star Wars movie every year until you die, but The Rise of Skywalker would kill all enthusiasm for that a month after “The Mandalorian’s” streaming debut – and it arrives with a bored shrug.

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