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

by

 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

Maternal Instinct: The True Story Behind Netflix’s #1 Documentary — and Where Taylor Parker Is Now

by

 A police officer stops a woman on a Texas road for speeding and driving like something is very wrong. She tells him she has just given birth. There is a newborn in the car, and the baby is real. Almost nothing else she says that day turns out to be. That traffic stop is where … Read more

KPop Demon Hunters Just Spent a Full Year in Netflix’s Top 10 — Here’s Why It Won’t Leave

by

 Most movies have a shelf life you can feel. They arrive, everyone talks about them for a week or two, and then they slide quietly down the list while the next thing takes their spot. KPop Demon Hunters never did that. As of this week, the animated film has done something no title in Netflix … Read more

Avatar: Fire and Ash — James Cameron Finally Gives the Na’vi a Villain of Their Own

by

  This week, two very different movies named Avatar landed on streaming, and the overlap is almost funny. One is the live-action remake of the cartoon, now into its second season. The other is the one that made close to a billion and a half dollars at the box office. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the … Read more

In the Hand of Dante — Oscar Isaac Is Both the Thief and the Poet in Julian Schnabel’s Wild Swing

by

  Some movies are content to tell you a story. In the Hand of Dante wants to grab you by the collar and drag you across seven centuries. Julian Schnabel’s new film, which played at Venice last fall and arrived on Netflix on June 24 after a brief run in theaters, is a literary heist, … Read more

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 Preview — A Darker Book, a New Team, and the Toph Problem

by

 There is one shot in the Season 2 trailer I keep returning to. Toph Beifong, the blind earthbending prodigy fans have waited two years to meet, stands clean and composed, not a hair out of place. Something in me hesitated. The Toph I grew up watching was never composed. She was dirt under the fingernails … Read more

I Will Find You Ending Explained — Is Matthew Alive, and Who Framed David?

by

 I Will Find You, Harlan Coben’s latest Netflix thriller, raced to the top of the charts after its June 18 release, and it ends the way his best stories do, with a long-buried lie blowing a family apart. The eight-episode mystery turns on three questions: is David’s son really alive, who took him, and who … Read more

Voicemails for Isabelle — Zoey Deutch Turns a Wrong-Number Rom-Com Into a Story About Grief

by

 Voicemails for Isabelle arrived on Netflix on June 19 and shot straight to the top of the movie chart, which is the kind of thing that happens when a rom-com has a hook this clean. A grieving woman keeps leaving voicemails for her dead sister, not knowing the number has been reassigned to a stranger … Read more

Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair — Why Malcolm Keeps His Family at a Distance

by

Malcolm has a practical reason for keeping his family away: he believes the life he has built works better without their interference. Hulu’s Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair brings that arrangement under pressure through his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. He now has a daughter, Leah, which makes the invitation harder to treat as … Read more

Black Phone 2 Ending Explained — Is the Grabber Really Gone for Good?

by

 Black Phone 2 is now streaming, and it sends Finney and Gwen up against a Grabber who is no longer quite human. The sequel ends with a frozen lake, three vengeful ghosts, and a phone call that recasts the whole story. If you want the ending untangled, here is what actually happens, what the twist … Read more