A24

Mother Mary — the Flop That Became an HBO Max Hit, and the Real Movie Under the Pretension

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  Mother Mary made about three million dollars in theaters on a twenty million dollar budget, which in studio math is a quiet disaster. Critics were not kind either. Variety called it the most pretentious pop star movie since Vox Lux, and it is not hard to see why. Lowery’s film wraps a small story … Read more

The Death of Robin Hood — Hugh Jackman’s A24 Elegy for a Hero Who Was Really a Killer

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 Every Robin Hood movie you have seen ends long before this one begins. The arrows find their mark, the Merry Men scatter into the greenwood, the Sheriff gets his comeuppance, and the legend rides off intact. The Death of Robin Hood, the A24 drama starring Hugh Jackman that opened in theaters in June and has … Read more

The Drama on HBO Max — Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and the Cringe Comedy Hiding Inside a Wedding Movie

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  For most of its first hour, The Drama behaves. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson, a couple a week away from their wedding, and the film hands you the movie the trailer sold: two of the most photographed actors alive, a gorgeous engagement, the low comic hum of a big … Read more

Backrooms Ending Explained: What Happens to Clark, and What Really Traps Mary

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  Backrooms does not end with a rescue. Clark walks into the yellow halls and stops coming back, and the therapist who follows him out again is not the woman who went in. If you came for the short version, that is it. But the ending only lands once you accept what the film has … Read more

Undertone Ending Explained — Is Evy Killed by Her Mother?

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 The scariest movie on HBO Max right now cost less than a used car and barely shows you its monster. Undertone, a tiny Canadian horror film that slipped into theaters in March and reached the platform on June 25, spent its first weekend as the most-watched thing on the service. It works because it understands … Read more

How to Make a Killing: Why Glen Powell’s Box-Office Flop Became HBO Max’s No. 1 Movie

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 Glen Powell smiles, and you forgive him almost anything. That is the entire engine of How to Make a Killing, and it is also the reason critics and audiences walked out of this movie into two completely different rooms. The film opened in theaters back in February and barely registered. Twenty million dollars, a number … Read more

Pillion — Alexander Skarsgård’s Biker Romance Is a Coming-of-Age Story in Disguise

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  Colin is in his thirties. He lives with his parents outside London, works at a parking garage, and sings in a family barbershop quartet. That is the entire shape of his life when Pillion begins, and Harry Melling plays him with a stoop in his shoulders that tells you he has stopped expecting anything … Read more