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Infinite Darkness sees our heroes covering familiar territory from opposite directions. Leon is now fully under the employ of the U.S. government after saving the president’s daughter from Los Iluminados in Resident Evil 4, and he even wears a suit while stopping a zombie outbreak inside the White House. Meanwhile, Claire works for an NGO in the fictional nation of Penamstan, which was torn apart by a civil war fueled by American interests and a few biological weapons....

Actually, the problem isn’t really Returnal itself so much as it’s the argument over difficult games. I generally love difficult games and have even recently highlighted some of the most challenging retro games across various generations. At the same time, the release of any new FromSoftware title or any other notably challenging game triggers that same defensive cry that insults just as it shuts down any meaningful conversation: “Git gud....

Riverdale Season 5 Episode 11 “What the hell just happened?” Following a lengthy hiatus, Riverdale has finally returned with its final batch of episodes from the series’ fifth season. As you may or may not recall, when credits rolled on the previous episode Riverdale High was being destroyed by convicts freed by Mr. Lodge from his prison, Veronica had retreated to New York City, and, most excitingly, Jughead was apparently abducted by aliens (which, in this show’s universe, would be a pretty ordinary development)....

If there hadn’t been a pandemic one of the horror movies everyone would be talking about this year would be Saint Maud. We’d be talking about it in the same breath as Hereditary, The Witch, The Babadook and Raw, but we’d know that it isn’t really like any of them. We might mention Repulsion, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, but we’d know what we’d seen is new and exciting. Release in UK cinemas on October 9 after getting pushed back and pulled forward several times, Saint Maud can finally find its way to audiences who feel comfortable going to the pictures – with a digital release to follow....

For many genre fans, there’s no more formative figure in our collective consciousnesses than Sarah Michelle Gellar, iconic lead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the woman who taught us all how to fight back against monsters of both the fictional and all-too-human varieties (and drop some very quotable one-liners in the process). Now, 25 years later, she’s about to take a leading role on another show that aims to use its scary setting as a backdrop to explore frighteningly human themes and real-world issues....

A quarter century ago, Wes Craven’s original Scream might have been called “elevated horror” for its sly combination of slasher mayhem, genuine suspense, and black comedy, not to mention its masterful running commentary on the horror genre and its tropes, delivered by the cast members themselves. And yet even back then, the success of Scream led to it being cannibalized into first one sequel, then a trilogy, then a fourth film a decade later, and now a fifth, another 10 years after Scream 4....

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is a sweeping fantasy epic that includes everything from an elite magical subclass (Grisha) that can manipulate the matter in surrounding elements and physical material, to a war-torn kingdom struggling to destroy a growing swath of literal darkness, and a girl whose heretofore undiscovered abilities just might be the key to changing the world. It’s also a story that’s unabashedly romantic in every sense of the word, firmly grounding its central narrative in complex human connections rather than Grisha magical castes or other more distinctly fantasy-oriented themes and tropes....

Shameless Season 8 Episode 8 Fiona doesn’t like being called complicated. She says as much tonight to her bemused and unsympathetic family members after Ford gave her the brutal shutdown in a hard-to-swallow scene. Still, he has a point, as every sibling points out when they note the various times she has kicked them out of the house or went to jail, or almost married a heroin addict. She certainly has her issues… as does everyone on this wacky and oft wonderful show....

Now that the “top secret beyond classified” D-Notice has expired on The Six Thatchers, we can drop the coyness: Mary Watson is no more. That’s the biggie the BBC didn’t want leaked and around which episode previews had to dance. Mary’s dead, John’s a widower and baby Rosamund is left a motherless child. It was a glum end to an episode that started out as jolly as Christmas with Sherlock on ebullient, ginger nut-crunching form....

But despite all that director Sam Mendes achieved with the film, some regrets hang over him as he looks back at the movie a decade later. If he had the chance to do the movie again, Mendes admitted to The Hollywood Reporter, he would “think twice about having Bond stand on the rooftops of Whitehall, with the Union Jack flags in the breeze, given the last 10 years of serial incompetence from [London’s] conservative government....

The cast member leading the charge to reference Sonic Boom is Colleen O’Shaughnessey, who got her start voicing Sonic’s sidekick Tails in that series and now voices him in the films. O’Shaughnessey, who spoke with Den of Geek ahead of Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s streaming release, wants to bring a very specific element of the series to the big screen, the band “Dude-itude.” In the Sonic Boom series, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles form a cross between a rock and boy band, and perform several songs of their own creation....

Until now. The duo, who were just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month, have composed the electronic portion of the music for the new Pixar film, Soul, which also features jazz compositions, performances, and arrangements by Jon Batiste. Asked if the idea of Nine Inch Nails scoring a Pixar film was met with a raised eyebrow or two, director (and Pixar chief creative officer) Pete Docter tells us, “That’s what was attractive about it, because I think we all have a little bit of ‘let’s pull the rug out from underneath all of this....

While the character of Mary Jane hasn’t technically been recast, Zendaya’s “MJ” sure has figured prominently in the new Marvel Studios take on the Spider-Man comic book mythos. And those Tom Holland-led films themselves constitute the second remake (or “reboot”) cycle at Sony in under a decade, following on the heels of the Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone-fronted The Amazing Spider-Man films. “It seems like a lot of movies I do get remade,” Dunst told EW....

Nearly 15 years and two reboots later, it turns out they could! Indeed, THR confirmed Tuesday that Molina will return as the metal-armed scientist in the Tom Holland-led, and Marvel Studios produced sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home. The movie doesn’t have a title as of yet, but with Molina joining Jamie Foxx—who played Electro in the much less revered The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)—clearly the film is going to be playing with the space time continuum, and bringing back some old favorites....

Death Race 2000 (1975) Not technically a live-action adaptation of Hanna Barbera cartoon Wacky Races with a deadly twist – though that’s very much the vibe – this Roger Corman camp-fest is a cult favourite. The film stars Kung Fu’s David Carradine as the mysterious champion driver of the Transcontinental Road Race, an ultra-violent race across America designed as an outlet for the population’s simmering violence under a totalitarian regime – much like sports day at school, but with muscle cars instead of eggs and spoons....

Squid Game uses a premise we’ve all seen before: People are thrown into an artificial arena where they must fight for their lives. In Netflix‘s new series, the arena is a massive, secret compound; the competition is a series of children’s games; and the people are 456 contestants who desperately need the ₩45.6billion ($39 million) prize money more than they need the illusion of safety the outside world periodically provides....

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 2 Star Trek: Discovery season three continues to take its time in the second episode, which acts as a satisfying parallel to the season premiere. Last week, we followed Michael in her first day in this strange, new frontier. This week, we’re doing the same with the rest of the Discovery crew. Like Michael, their introduction to this new time begins with a traumatic, dizzying fall from space....

The Star Trek universe is not only expanding, but reinvesting in beloved characters from Trek series past in some wonderfully integrated ways. What started with Spock’s role on Discovery and the launch of the Picard series, has now extended into the universe’s animated world. In the Lower Decks season finale, the USS Titan warps in to save the day, led by none other than Captain William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Commander Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis)....

But one name you might not associate with the earliest days of Star Trek is Lucille Ball. When director Brian Volk-Weiss set out to make The Center Seat: Celebrating 55 Years of Star Trek, one of the things he set out to change was that a lot of the history of Star Trek that had been covered by books and journalism had never been seen in a documentary, and Lucille Ball was the most egregious example of that....

Obi-Wan Kenobi finally returns to Tatooine, but not before pitting two Star Wars greats against each other in a reference-filled finale. Darth Vader and Obi-Wan’s rematch opens up the wounds of their former friendship, while also setting them up for their future roles in the Original Trilogy. Meanwhile, Reva heads back to the Lars homestead. While she has a big decision to make, it’s inevitable that she comes face to face with a young Luke Skywalker, played by newcomer Grant Feely....