After seven years focused on making documentaries, Werner Herzog has finally returned to the world of narrative film with Bucking Fastard. Herzog, who serves as both writer and director, spotlights Kate Mara and Rooney Mara in this film, which is inspired by the real-life story of sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin. Kate plays Jean Holbrooke, while Rooney plays her sister, Joan—two characters who are so in sync with each other that they finish each other’s sentences, speak in unison, fall in love with the same man, and struggle to find their own individual identity outside their duo. Caught in a scandal after falling for the wrong guy, Jean and Joan somehow find themselves digging a tunnel inside a cave in Ireland, in a bizarre and surreal tale that ultimately struggles to find its proper footing.

‘Bucking Fastard’s First Half Is a Weird but Hilarious Good Time

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The charm of Bucking Fastard comes in the form of the Holbrooke sisters and their unconventional bond. While they’re not actual twins, they act in a way that goes beyond the limits of identical twindom, seemingly sharing the same thoughts, dressing in the same clothes, and speaking the same words. But their connection moves far beyond that into the realm of the incestuous and inappropriate when it’s revealed they also share a lover—their neighbor, Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom).

Herzog’s film begins like a legal drama, with Joan and Jean in court facing off with Gareth, who is asking for a restraining order against them. What might have seemed like a freaky interlude for Gareth feels like true love for the sisters. And when Gareth decides that it’s time to get married (to someone else), the sisters not only become wildly possessive, but seek their revenge on the man they once professed to be their true love. The legal case ends up becoming a media sensation—as it did for the real-life Chaplin twins—and launches Jean and Joan, unwillingly, into the public eye.

Much of the appeal of the first half of the movie comes from watching the two Holbrooke sisters try to navigate a modern world. From pervy creeps who are obsessed with them to onlookers who see them as an odd novelty rather than human beings, Joan and Jean might seem a little weird, but it’s impossible not to feel a bit protective of them. Their innate naïveté is endearing, even when it’s overdone.

It’s hard to understand how the sisters have remained so sheltered their entire lives, but the world Herzog creates is admittedly surreal, and it’s that combination of surreality and humor that makes the film unique. The fact that Herzog dedicates the film to David Lynch might explain some of that, but Lynchian or not, it doesn’t excuse the inconsistency that begins to poke out of the film’s seams upon closer investigation.

‘Bucking Fastard’ Fails To Make an Impact Halfway Through the Movie

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Bucking Fastard‘s problem is not one particularly unique to this movie: there are simply too many ideas. The first half feels like a small-town dramedy. Caricature-like background characters pass through the sisters’ lives, nearly as odd as they are. Save their lawyer and their Aunt Louise (Marion O’Dwyer), every character in the film is male, and they either fetishize or infantilize the sisters.

On one hand, Herzog might have been better served trying not to explain the quirky world that the Holbrooke sisters live in; lingering in the weirdness could have given the film a folktale-like quality. The problem is that Herzog does poke at the elephant in the room, trying to pop the bubble of the Holbrookes’ connection with a dose of reality. After their trial, the sisters meet Timothy (Domhnall Gleeson), a social worker who has been assigned to help them find their independence from each other. It’s in these moments that it becomes clear that Joan and Jean’s synchronicity isn’t just a fantastical trait, but more likely the result of loneliness and a fear of abandonment.

As Timothy encourages them to do things on their own, we finally see some friction between the sisters. Ironically, it’s this move to “explain” their codependency that ruins the narrative. During the second half of the film, Herzog throws a bunch of concepts at the wall, hoping that one of them might stick. Though the film is beautiful, with Herzog using his experience as a nature documentarian to capture the majesty of rural Ireland, once the movie reaches this point, it also begins to lack any real substance. Rather than leaning fully in, Bucking Fastard vacillates between absurdity and a more sobering reality. This then leads to glaring inconsistencies with tone and pacing that bring the momentum to a screeching halt.

Despite All of That, ‘Bucking Fastard’ Allows Kate and Rooney Mara To Shine

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What ultimately makes Bucking Fastard work is the dynamic between Kate and Rooney Mara. It’s a testament to their performances that it’s actually not difficult to see the distinct traits unique to each character, even when they act and look like carbon copies of each other. Rooney delivers a just-slightly-better performance as the more emotive of the two sisters, but it’s her natural chemistry with Kate that creates the magic. At the same time, their ability to speak in unison, adapting the same staccato tone, is genuinely impressive, and the Maras deserve all the flowers for the complicated performance.

Another standout comes in the form of Bloom, who plays the cavalier, flirtatious, and ultimately disloyal neighbor who the sisters first fall in love with. It’s odd that Bloom hasn’t played many characters like this, because he excels at embracing a smarmy attitude, one that makes him utterly punchable but also endlessly entertaining. Compared to some of the other completely one-dimensional characters, Bloom is the source of much of the film’s humor, and it’s a pity we didn’t get more of him.

Although Herzog’s script could have used a lot more refining, Bucking Fastard is visually sumptuous and warm. The costuming, visual landscape, and camera angles all evoke a sense of the fantastical without bringing in any true elements of fantasy. Toward the end of the film, Herzog dips back into a bit of magical realism, but due to the pivoting back and forth in tone, it doesn’t land nearly as hard as it should. At the end of it all, the Maras remain the best part of the Bucking Fastard, but even they are occasionally overshadowed by a concept that needs a bit more sharpening and refining.

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Release Date

September 5, 2026

Runtime

109 minutes

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Director

Werner Herzog

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Writers

Werner Herzog

Producers

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Agnes Chu, Ariel Leon Isacovitch, Clara Wu Tsai, Werner Herzog

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Cast

• 
• 

  Rooney Mara

  Joan Holbrooke

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Pros & Cons

• Kate and Rooney Mara excel at playing the odd Holbrooke sisters and acting in sync.
• Orlando Bloom is perfect as a smarmy antagonist, a role we rarely see him in.

• The first half of the film and the second half feel too tonally different to mesh together.
• In trying to explain the sisters’ bond, the movie loses some of its charm and mystique.
• Herzog loses some of the absurdity that would have gone a long way to making this a winning film.

There is no point in watching a great thriller if you’re not calculating all the time. You start calculating. Who has the gun? Who knows more than they are admitting? How long until somebody makes the choice that ruins everything? The room around you becomes irrelevant because the movie has quietly turned you into another nervous participant. That is the standard here. Not merely suspenseful. Not merely dark.

And the best part is how differently they do it. One weaponizes an empty room. Another turns Los Angeles traffic into a death clock. The tension changes shape every time. The grip does not. These are 8 most exciting thrillers of the 21st century and they make sitting still feel strangely difficult.

8

‘The Invisible Man’ (2020)

Image via Universal Pictures

Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) escapes an abusive relationship in the middle of the night, convinced that Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) will never willingly let her go. Then Adrian is reported dead. The Invisible Man immediately understands the cruelest possible question to place inside that relief. What if Cecilia is right to remain afraid even when nobody else can see what she sees?

The movie gets enormous mileage from apparently empty space. A doorway held in frame for slightly too long becomes suspicious. A chair seems occupied even when it is not. A breath, footprint, or minor movement suddenly matters because Cecilia’s safety depends on proving the existence of something designed to leave no proof. The restaurant sequence is especially vicious because it takes a public place, somewhere that should feel safe, and turns one impossible act into instant catastrophe. The sci-fi hook is clever, but the real tension comes from everyone around Cecilia deciding that fear itself is evidence against her.

7

‘Collateral’ (2004)

Image via DreamWorks Pictures

Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) thinks he is picking up one more passenger during another long night driving a cab through Los Angeles. Vincent (Tom Cruise) gets in, offers him a large fare for several stops, and seems unusually composed. Then a body crashes onto the roof of the taxi.

From there, Collateral turns the city into a route Max desperately wants to escape. Vincent has a schedule to keep and several people to kill before sunrise, which gives every delay a strange double meaning. Traffic can save Max or trap him. A nightclub becomes a maze of cops, targets, and gunfire. Even the quieter scenes feel dangerous because Vincent can switch from philosophical conversation to lethal efficiency without changing his tone very much. The coyote crossing the empty street briefly stops both men and somehow makes Los Angeles feel even stranger. By dawn, the entire city seems to have become part of the chase.

6

‘Gone Girl’ (2014)

Image via 20th Century Studios

Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, leaving behind blood, an overturned living room, an anniversary treasure hunt, and a husband who looks increasingly terrible on television. Gone Girl spends its first half asking whether Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) killed his wife. Then it becomes far more entertaining once you realize that question was only the entrance.

The media circus is almost as dangerous as the marriage itself. Nick’s smile beside Amy’s missing-person poster becomes national evidence of guilt. Amy’s diary provides one version of their relationship, while reality keeps exposing how carefully both spouses curate themselves for other people. Then “Cool Girl” arrives, not simply as a speech but as a brutal explanation of the performance Amy believes women are expected to maintain. The movie is wickedly funny because Nick and Amy understand each other better than anyone else ever could. That mutual understanding is precisely what makes the marriage terrifying.

5

‘Sicario’ (2015)

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The convoy into Juárez is where Sicario announces the kind of movie it intends to be. FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) sits inside an armored vehicle surrounded by men who seem completely comfortable with a level of danger she is still trying to understand. Bodies hang from an overpass. Traffic slows near the border. Everybody starts watching the surrounding cars.

Nothing explodes for several minutes, yet the scene is almost unbearable. That is the movie’s specialty. Kate is constantly entering rooms where the rules have already been agreed upon by people who did not bother telling her. Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro)’s calm makes him difficult to read, while Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) treats the entire operation with the casual confidence of someone who has accepted moral compromises Kate is still discovering. The tunnel raid pushes that feeling into literal darkness. You are not excited because you understand the plan. You are excited because Kate does not.

4

‘Prisoners’ (2013)

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Certainty is the most frightening thing in Prisoners. Two little girls disappear on Thanksgiving. Their families remember a suspicious RV parked nearby. The police find Alex Jones (Paul Dano), but there is not enough evidence to hold him. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) hears him say just enough to become convinced the answer is standing right in front of him.

Keller kidnaps Alex and begins trying to force information from him, turning a father’s desperation into something the audience cannot comfortably endorse or dismiss. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), meanwhile, follows clues through abandoned properties, old cases, mazes, and people whose connection to the disappearance keeps changing shape. The movie thrives on the gap between what Keller believes and what Loki can prove. Rain seems to fall constantly, rooms feel airless, and every hour lost feels catastrophic. Even before the case fully reveals itself, the pressure has already done damage nobody can undo. Not to mention that Jackman’s acting was so intense, and at one point he punched so hard in improvisation that his co-stars got scared.

3

‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)

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As funny as it sounds, Uncut Gems is a brilliant thriller. Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is the only person in Uncut Gems who seems to believe Howard Ratner is one smart move away from fixing everything. That belief survives gambling debts, furious collectors, family problems, business trouble, and every previous smart move that made the situation worse.

The black opal gives Howard a new obsession because Kevin Garnett (Kevin Garnett) becomes convinced it has special power, and suddenly jewelry, basketball, debt, and superstition are all part of the same frantic calculation. Howard keeps borrowing against things he does not truly control, then using the temporary breathing room to make another bet. Doors jam. Phones ring. People shout over each other. Even a Celtics game becomes difficult to watch because Howard has built a wager complicated enough to make every possession feel life-or-death. The remarkable thing is that you eventually start wanting his insane plan to work. That is how completely the movie traps you inside his brain.

2

‘The Departed’ (2006)

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Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is working undercover inside Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson)’s organization. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is working inside the Massachusetts State Police for Costello. Both sides know they have a rat. Neither side knows exactly who.

That setup gives The Departed a wonderful cruelty because almost every conversation contains information somebody is not supposed to have. A phone left vibrating on a table can become more frightening than a gun. Billy is being crushed by the strain of living among criminals who would kill him immediately if they knew the truth, while Colin keeps improvising ways to protect a secret life that looks increasingly impossible to maintain. Costello enjoys making everyone around him uncomfortable, which makes even casual conversations feel unstable. Then the movie reaches the elevator, and if you know, you know. Few thrillers are this funny, nasty, and committed to reminding you that one bad second can erase a very careful plan.

1

‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)

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Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds the aftermath of a drug deal in the Texas desert, discovers a case containing two million dollars, and takes it home. He knows exactly what kind of trouble that money represents. He takes it anyway.

The chase that follows in No Country for Old Men feels terrifying because Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) barely seems to participate in ordinary human urgency. He moves at his own pace, uses a captive bolt pistol like something borrowed from another nightmare, and occasionally lets a coin toss decide whether another person gets to live. The gas-station scene contains almost no action, yet “call it” becomes unbearable because the man behind the counter slowly realizes the stakes before he understands the reason. Moss is resourceful enough to make the pursuit exciting, especially during the motel and border stretches, but the movie keeps widening beyond hunter and hunted through Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones)’s exhausted perspective. That is what gives the tension such unusual weight. You are watching a chase, but you are also watching an older man realize the world no longer behaves according to rules he recognizes.

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No Country for Old Men

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Release Date

November 21, 2007

Runtime

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122 minutes

Director

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

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Writers

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

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Director Quentin Tarantino frequently shares his list of favorite movies, ranging from broad best-of-the-year lists to breakdowns of more obscure genres. His favorite movie of 2026, for instance, is the Netflix crime-thriller The Rip, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. His favorite spaghetti Western, on the other hand, is Sergio Leone‘s epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Tarantino has also made his love for grindhouse cinema quite apparent over the course of his career. Around two decades ago, he collaborated with Robert Rodriguez on a grindhouse double-bill released theatrically; his installment, Death Proof, is widely regarded as his most minor work. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino has a list of favorite grindhouse films, and the highest-rated movie on it is currently streaming on Prime Video and Shudder. In his book “Cinema Speculation,” Tarantino described it as one of the few “perfect” movies ever made.

Not every movie with a vaguely exploitation-cinema vibe can meet Tarantino’s guidelines for what qualifies as grindhouse cinema. Number-one on the list of requirements, he explained in a 2008 interview, is that the movie in question must have played in an actual grindhouse — that is, not a mainstream theater. “Halloween could be on here, but Friday the 13th couldn’t, because that was a Paramount movie,” he explained. Tarantino’s favorite grindhouse movie is an 83-minute horror classic that spawned a franchise that continues to this day, and is about to be rebooted by Curry Barker, the director of this year’s smash-hit Obsession.

Here’s Where You Can Watch Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite Grindhouse Movie on Streaming

We’re talking, of course, about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Director Tobe Hooper‘s controversial slasher movie was partially inspired by the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein and was banned in several countries for its graphic content. The movie was produced on a shoestring budget of $140,000, and it went on to gross $30 million. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 85% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Thanks to a smart script and documentary-style camerawork, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre achieves start-to-finish suspense, making it a classic in low-budget exploitation cinema.” The movie launched a franchise that has survived decades, and was most recently rebooted by Netflix in 2022. A new movie, directed by Barker, will be produced and distributed by A24. You can watch Hooper’s 1974 original on Prime Video, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

In fantasy, villains are beloved characters. All readers need is an evil sorcerer, a cruel king, or a tyrant who only wants to gain more power, and they have plenty of good reasons to hate any of them. Still, some of the most interesting villains in fantasy literature make their readers’ relationships with them complicated. This can happen when villains commit awful deeds but justify their actions; they may be cruel, but they have also suffered cruelty at the hands of others; or, in some cases, they are such unique personalities that readers feel sorry for them when they fail.

The five fantasy novels discussed below show that a villain can be cool even if they’re completely unlikable. They need to give readers a reason to understand them. Before long, that understanding can turn into sympathy, sympathy can turn into investment, and suddenly you’re cheering for someone you probably shouldn’t.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

Image via JungShan Chang / Harper Voyager / HarperCollins

The Poppy War is the debut novel by author R.F. Kuang. It follows the life of subdued Fang Runin, also known as Rin. After hardships as a war orphan, she wants to fight the arranged marriage set for her, and her only escape leads to the dangerous Keju exam, a difficult national test that grants her admission to Sinegard, an elite military school in her nation. The book starts as a run-of-the-mill fantasy novel, but gradually grows darker and more twisted as Rin learns about her shaman powers tied to the Gods. Once the war breaks out, her academics become purely practical, and she has to face the reality of war.

Rin is the type of character who proves that the term villain does not fully encompass her complexity. Her actions turn out to be more reckless and more extreme, and her rage ultimately pushes Rin to commit a horrifying crime. Nevertheless, throughout the story, Kuang helps readers understand why Rin has become such a person. She has been the victim of severe violence and discrimination, had to face manipulations by those in power, and had to endure all these terrible events of war. None of that excuses what she does, but it makes her choices understandable. Her rage becomes a source of power, and Kuang makes it increasingly difficult for readers to separate Rin’s violence from the world that taught her violence was the only language anyone respected.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Image via Will Staehle / Tor Books

In Vicious by V.E. Schwab, Victor Vale and Eli Cardale are college roommates who become fascinated by the possibility of creating superhuman abilities. Their research reveals that near-death experiences can transform ordinary people into ExtraOrdinaries, and the two decide to test the theory on themselves. It works, but the experiment destroys their friendship. Ten years later, Victor has spent years in prison, while Eli has reinvented himself as a celebrated hero with a very different mission: eliminating other ExtraOrdinaries. Victor escapes prison with his new friend Mitch and sets out to find Eli, turning what began as a scientific experiment into a deeply personal revenge story.

Victor is ruthless, calculating, and perfectly comfortable hurting people if he believes there’s a reason for it. He also has absolutely no interest in pretending otherwise. Eli, meanwhile, has convinced himself that killing other ExtraOrdinaries makes him a hero, giving Vicious a deliciously warped take on the superhero story. Victor’s desire for revenge isn’t noble, but Schwab makes his perspective increasingly persuasive because Eli’s supposed heroism is built on hypocrisy. Victor also develops genuine attachments, particularly to Sydney, that complicate the idea that he’s simply a cold-blooded monster.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Image via Gollancz/Spectra/Benjamin Carré

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch features Locke Lamora, a thief, a con artist, and an exceptionally talented liar. He also happens to be the leader of the Gentleman Bastards, a gang that specializes in elaborate schemes designed to separate wealthy nobles from their money. Their home is Camorr, a sprawling fantasy city inspired by medieval Venice, where the criminal underworld runs by its own rules. Locke and his crew technically maintain a respectable reputation as petty thieves while secretly pulling off enormous cons. That arrangement works beautifully until a mysterious criminal known as the Gray King begins dismantling Camorr’s criminal hierarchy.

Calling Locke a villain isn’t quite accurate, but calling him a hero would be even harder to defend; he lies constantly, steals for a living, manipulates people for money, and has no problem bending or breaking rules when it benefits him. Yet Lynch gives him the qualities that make a morally questionable character impossible to resist. When the Gray King destroys Locke’s carefully constructed world and murders members of his crew, Locke’s desire for revenge becomes nonobjective. Locke is the sort of character who can walk into a disaster of his own making, somehow make everything worse, and still have you desperately hoping he gets out alive.

The Young Elites by Marie Lu

Image via Kip Rasmus / Penguin Audio

A decade after a horrible blood fever ravaged the kingdom, many of the survivors bear the marks of their ordeal in The Young Elites by Marie Lu. The malfettos are treated like dangerous outcasts, and a smaller group emerges from the disease with wondrous powers and becomes known as the Young Elites, while the Inquisition Axis fervently hunts them down, fearing they will destroy the kingdom. Adelina Amouteru is one of those malfettos. After years of abuse from her father, she kills him by accident after her powers awaken, leading to her being sentenced to death. She is saved by the Dagger Society, a group of Young Elites who oppose the kingdom, although joining them is far from helping Adelina become a true fantasy hero.

Adelina’s narrative gets interesting precisely because she becomes less likable while always remaining understandable. The protagonist is paranoid, selfish, cruel, and increasingly full of rage and fear. Her illusion abilities are tied to these emotions, and the feelings that make her dangerous also make her powerful. Lu shows that Adelina’s bad traits aren’t hidden from the reader; instead, she describes the abuse and suffering that made her who she is before showing that she has gained the power to fight back.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Image via Gollancz/Chris McGrath

Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself doesn’t bother with the traditional fantasy distinction between good guys and bad guys. Its world is packed with people who are compromised, selfish, violent, or all three, and the story follows several of them as political conspiracies, wars, and old grudges begin colliding. There’s Logen Ninefingers, a notorious Northman trying to outrun his bloody past; Jezal dan Luthar, a vain nobleman obsessed with fencing and status; and Sand dan Glokta, a former war hero who has become a torturer for the Inquisition after being brutally crippled. Then there’s Bayaz, an enigmatic wizard who claims to be the First of the Magi and quickly becomes entangled in the others’ lives. The result is a fantasy story where almost everyone has a reason to make you uncomfortable.

Glokta might be the clearest example of why Abercrombie’s characters are so difficult to categorize. He’s a torturer. He extracts confessions through agony and works for a deeply corrupt institution. By any conventional standard, he’s a villain; yet Glokta is also one of the most perceptive people in the story, and his investigations expose corruption that the supposedly respectable members of society would rather keep hidden.

After the success of Tim Burton‘s Batman in the late 1980s, studios across town dedicated themselves to producing movies based on other pulp comic strip characters from the 1930s and 1940s. One of the most prominent superheroes of that era had already been featured in a short-lived television series in the 1960s, around the same time as the Adam West and Burt Ward Batman series — in fact, both shows were created by the same man, William Dozier. However, the other property didn’t get a proper film adaptation until much later, during the second wave of superhero cinema in the 2010s. The movie’s production was riddled with problems, and its star later described the experience of making it as a “nightmare.” Now, the movie is streaming for free in the United States, so if you haven’t checked it out, now is your chance to do so.

It was released in 2011, just a year before Marvel’s The Avengers and during Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Interestingly, the movie didn’t follow the path established by the MCU, nor was it a grounded epic in the vein of Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Trilogy. One of the many reasons behind its perceived failure was that it refused to be put in a box. Appearing on Marc Maron‘s WTF Podcast, Seth Rogen shared stories about the making of the movie, and said that the script was under constant scrutiny from the studio, while the expensive action sequences were not paid attention to at all. “What we spent literally $50 million dollars on, no one checks out. And that’s what’s crazy. The way the money was spent and the way the money is spent on a lot of these movies is crazy,” Rogen said.

Here’s Where You Can Watch the Failed Superhero Franchise-Starter for Free

We’re talking, of course, about The Green Hornet, also featuring Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz, Tom Wilkinson and a pre-Stranger Things David Harbour. The movie was directed by Michel Gondry, and his inexperience at tackling big-budget projects quickly became an issue. “It was his first movie with more than a $20 million budget and this was a $120 million budget,” Rogen said, citing his own shortcomings in the action genre as well. The movie ultimately grossed around $230 million worldwide. The movie now holds a 45% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “It’s sporadically entertaining, but The Green Hornet never approaches the surreal heights suggested by a Michel Gondry/Seth Rogen collaboration.” You can watch The Green Hornet for free this month on Pluto TV, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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Release Date

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January 14, 2011

Runtime

119 Minutes

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Netflix has a history of putting its finger on the pulse of what matters, from Stranger Things to Squid Game. The newest hot ticket item, however, is not a movie or television series. As everyone came down with Grand Theft Auto fever, the streamer followed suit. Grand Theft Auto VI is imminent after 13 years of waiting, and Netflix has just the thing to tide fans over before its release. The 23-minute-long featurette, Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, has exploded in the pop culture zeitgeist.

As Netflix continues to find its niche in the new world order of streaming, the early look at the new video game has driven viewers to the platform in droves. According to FlixPatrol, the short feature has had 14,000 hours of viewership in just one week. This bodes well for the game that is one of the most anticipated of the year. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look gives viewers a hint at what is to come, and it does not disappoint.

‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ May Be the Crowning Achievement For the Video Game Series

It goes without saying that in the decade that fans have been waiting for a new Grand Theft Auto game to be released, there have been some major achievements in the industry. When Grand Theft Auto V first came out, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt had not been released. Since then, it won Game of the Year, while The Last of Us Part I was remade, and The Last of Us Part II was released. It is a brave new world, and the extended look into Grand Theft Auto VI seems to indicate that there is a reward for patience.

The featurette introduces Jason and Lucia, partners in crime – and in life if gamers choose to do so. This game marks the return to Vice City, a fictionalized version of Miami. Together, they try to rise through the ranks of the criminal world while maintaining personal relationships and even their own physique, depending on how gamers play.

The upcoming game has outdone itself in comparison to all other Grand Theft Auto ventures, if the brief hint at the gameplay is any indication. The details present in the short are nothing short of miraculous. The animation seems to be worth the wait, as are the complexities of gameplay. Players have the option to romance their partner and can choose options like holding hands and texting each other.

They can also switch back and forth between Jason and Lucia at will. Players can also take their avatars to the gym if that is how they desire to spend their time. This new Grand Theft Auto adventure is more than dabbling in realism. The attention to detail is mind-blowing and far exceeds the potential of previous games. The inside look at this new iteration is more than a gameplay trailer. It shows off the lengths Rockstar went to impress potential gamers. Those who may not have initially had a mind to play the game may want to after its exposure on Netflix. It seems that video games are back, and many people will be taking the day off when this one is released on November 19.

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Released

November 19, 2026

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ESRB

Rating Pending – Likely Mature 17+

Engine

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Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE)

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

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Prequel(s)

Grand Theft Auto 5

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Serial killer thrillers and supernatural horror don’t always make comfortable bedfellows, but Osgood Perkins found a particularly disturbing way to combine the two. Two years ago, Perkins made a film that paired the procedural hunt for a killer like Silence of the Lambs into something a lot more horrifying, while also burying Nicolas Cage beneath a mountain of prosthetics and, in doing so, giving him one of the best showcases of his career.

Two years later, Longlegs has officially discovered a new streaming home. The horror hit from Neon has landed on Hulu in the United States, just in time for those who want something new and pants-soilingly terrifying to watch in the spooky season. Longlegs is also available through Disney+ for subscribers with the appropriate Hulu access.

Longlegs sees us follow Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), an FBI agent who’s assigned to investigate a mysterious serial killer (Cage) who is linked to a string of, it would appear, inexplicable family murders. At first, she begins uncovering occult clues that seem to link them all together, but the investigation gets a lot more disturbing for her, and us, when she starts to realize that she has a connection to the killer that makes things a lot more personal than she could have ever contemplated.

The cast also features Blair Underwood (L.A. Law) as Agent Carter, Alicia Witt (Dune) as Ruth Harker, Michelle Choi-Lee (Yellowjackets) as Agent Browning, Dakota Daulby (Billy the Kid) as Agent Fisk, Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as Carrie Anne Camera, and Jason William Day (The Last of Us) as Father Camera.

‘Longlegs’ Was One of 2024’s Biggest Horror Hits

For the most part, critics adored what Perkins did with Longlegs, which currently has a score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, from more than 300 reviews, with particular praise going to the oppressive atmosphere and, of course, Cage himself. Audiences were a bit put off, though, giving it a 61% Popcornmeter score. But that’s not something that stopped it from becoming a sleeper hit, as it earned more than $74 million domestically alone. The film also did wonders for Monroe, once again cementing her as a scream queen in the making following her breakout roles in The Guest and It Follows.

Longlegs is streaming now on Hulu.

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Release Date

July 12, 2024

Runtime

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101 Minutes

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Romantic comedies often get reduced to their own surface mechanics, possibly more than any other genre. Aspects such as the meet-cute, the misunderstanding, the airport dash, the happy ending and countless others. But ironically, some of the most enduring entries in this category are not about falling in love at all. They are more about loss, the grief that comes with it, and losing a relationship, or a version of yourself and using romance as the vehicle to process it rather than the core driving force of the narrative. With two rom-com classics in About Time and Sleepless in Seattle hitting Netflix on September 1st, now feels like the right moment to revisit why films like these two have held up so much longer than their genre peers.

This distinction is crucial because it explains why certain entries have stuck around decades after their initial release while flashier, more conventional entries have faded into the abyss. Grief gives these movies a certain level of emotional stakes that the genre’s traditionally comedic structuring doesn’t allow for. It forces their characters to change in ways a simple obstacle-to-love plot rarely demands. The comedy still exits just in a more clever and sporadic manner. But look at all seven of these films, and it is actually rarely ever romance driving the plot itself.

But what truly separates this list from other well-known romantic comedies is how little their central romances actually resolve the grief driving them. A death, a divorce, an illness, a memory slipping away. None of these things gets neatly tied up by the arrival of a new partner, no matter how satisfying the ending feels. Instead, love becomes the space where these characters finally let themselves feel what they had been avoiding. That’s the true difference the movies encompassing this list have, that has allowed space for them to stay in the cultural zeitgeist long after many of their peers have mostly been forgotten. Revisiting them with that lens changes almost everything about how their famous scenes actually land.

7

‘Notting Hill’ (1999)

Image via Universal Pictures

On the surface, Notting Hill is a straightforward fish-out-of-water romance between an ordinary bookshop owner and a famous movie star. But, the arc of bookkeeper William Thacker, played by Hugh Grant, only makes sense once you notice how much he is feeling loss and how it has already been defining the majority of his life. He is divorced, his travel bookshop is barely staying afloat, and his social circle is a small, tightly bonded group of friends that were built as a replacement family for a life that didn’t go as planned. His hesitation throughout the film is not really about Anna’s (Julia Roberts) fame or even the tabloid chaos that seems to follow her everywhere. It is really about a man who has already been disappointed before, and has arranged his entire existence — his eccentric roommate Spike and his low-stakes bookshop routine — around never being disappointed again.

That undercut of a quiet resignation that he holds, is what gives the films more famous, sweeping moments their weight. William’s growth in the movie is really about relearning how to risk loss again after already absorbing one. All culminating in his decision to chase Anna down instead of letting his old ways get the best of him. The romantic optimism the project exudes, crystallized in that final Notting Hill garden scene, resonates so acutely because it is fighting against a real lived-in grief. Divorce rarely gets this much screen time in a genre built on first loves.

6

‘About Time’ (2013)

Image via Universal Pictures

About Time wears its premise as a time-travel romance, but the film’s actual emotional center has pretty much nothing to do with its central couple. Tim’s relationship with his father, played by Bill Nighy, and the years he spends trying to appreciate ordinary moments before being able to revisit them, is the story the film is actually telling. The romance with Mary (Rachel McAdams), functions as the backdrop against which Tim learns to value the time he has, useful and sweet in its own right, but never the film’s true stakes. It is that devastating gut punch when Tim learns he can no longer travel back once his father has died. That, his journey has really been about a version of mortality and fatherhood rather than pure romantic love.

By the end, About Time has largely abandoned its central love story, choosing to sit with the grief behind the narrative directly. It shows Tim reliving ordinary days with his father, playing ping pong, walking on the beach, lone last time before accepting he cannot anymore. Richard Curtis structures the entirety of the back half of the film around that farewell and not any romantic climax one might have expected. Its a clear example of a movie using that romcom structure as a Trojan Horse of sorts, to build a narrative focused on loss. Audiences walk in expecting a love story and walk out having cried over a father-son relationship instead.

5

‘The Big Sick’ (2017)

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The Big Sick complicates its own marriage structure by removing its female lead from most of the film’s runtime. It places Emily in a medically induced coma and forces Kumail to fall in love with her parents, Terry and Beth instead while confronting the very real possibility that she might die. This movie never lets the audience forget how close its central relationship comes to ending before it ever truly begins. It turns what could have been a standard culture-clash romance about Kumail’s Pakistani family and arranged marriage expectations into something closer to a meditation on anticipatory grief. Since it’s based on the real courtship of Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, the movie treats the medical crisis with an attention and care most romcoms never attempt.

It is a tension that is constantly overshadowed by the threat of loss, which gives the movie’s comedic beats real meaning and a weight beyond traditional genre-infused bits. And Kumail’s growing bond with Emily’s parents becomes its own kind of grief-adjacent relationship, constructed out of a shared fear and long hospital waiting-room silences. It makes the eventual resolution to the story feel earned and lived in rather than just another simple, sweet romantic comedy entry. By the time Emily wakes up, The Big Sick has already done the emotional heavy lifting of grieving a relationship that technically never ended. It makes its actual reunion almost secondary to everything before it, cleverly side-stepping a massive genre stereotype.

4

‘Marley & Me’ (2008)

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Marley & Me is really a film about marriage, even though its true emotional architecture is built around a dog’s lifespan. And, by extension, the couple’s own passage through young adulthood into middle age and eventual loss. John and Jennifer’s relationship survives job changes, career disappointments, and multiple children, but the movie frames all of it through Marley’s aging body. Director David Frankel uses the destructive, exuberant Labrador as a clock counting down toward an ending the audience knows is coming from the opening scenes. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston play the marriage itself with a genuine and relatable warmth, but the film’s subject is how a family measures time through a dog who ages vastly quicker than they do.

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It is that structure which turns what could have been a fairly conventional marriage dramedy into a heart-breaking story about the intricacies of what keeps a family together. The harder, more mournful moments weaved between the lighter and happier comedic beats: Marley eating jewelry, terrorizing the vet, destroying furniture, all to disarm the audience before delivering one of the genre’s most devastating final acts. It is a form of grief that is inventively disguised as a family comedy for the majority of its runtime, only revealing its real intentions in the final fifteen minutes when Marley’s decline becomes impossible to ignore. Few films marketed this directly to families have ever been willing to sit with a beloved animal’s death this directly.

3

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (2012)

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Silver Linings Playbook uses romance as a mechanism through which two deeply wounded people process very different kinds of loss. For Pat (Bradley Cooper), it’s his marriage, his mental stability, and the life he had before a bipolar breakdown landed him in a psychiatric hospital. And for Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), it’s the loss of her husband and her own sense of self and struggle with mental illness after his sudden death. Neither character is remotely ready for a conventional relationship, and David O. Russell‘s film is honest about that. He lets their connection slowly and methodically develop through shared damage, blunt honesty and mutual recognition instead of your typical romcom chemistry. Their courtship, built around a dance competition neither one of them is qualified for, becomes less about romance and more about two people learning to function again.

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But what makes this one truly work is its refusal to treat either character’s grief as something a relationship simply cures. Their bond is messy, halting and forged on real emotional wreckage, complete with restraining orders, family dysfunction and a mental illness handled without much sentimentality. The films ultimately hopeful ending is enhanced through how their grief doesn’t pretend to ever be fully resolved, only that they have found someone equipped to sit inside it with them. That distinction is what separates it from far tidier films about recovery.

2

‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ (2004)

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Eternal Sunshine takes the genre’s usual approach to loss and inverts it entirely, following a couple who choose to erase the memory of their relationship rather than simply mourn its end. The film becomes a meditation on grief experienced in reverse, watching Joel (Jim Carrey) relive and lose his memories of Clementine (Cate Blanchett) in real time as the erasure procedure takes hold. It forces him to confront exactly what he is giving up as it disappears piece by piece. Michel Gondry’s disorienting visual style makes that process feel unsettling, the memories collapsing and rearranging as Joel fights to keep pieces of Clementine alive in his own mind.

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That structural choice makes the film’s eventual, cautious optimism feel hard-won rather than saccharine. Instead of a couple falling in love for the first time, as in many straightforward romance movies this one ends with two people choosing to risk the same loss again, fully aware of what heartbreak costs after literally watching it happen on screen. Their final “okay” is one of the more loaded one-word endings in the genre due to all of what the audience just witnessed them lose and rebuild. It reframes the entire genre’s usual assumption that love is inherently worth the risk into something the characters have to actively, consciously choose.

1

‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (1993)

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Sleepless in Seattle spends most of its runtime pretending to be about a meet-cute that hasn’t happened yet. The true emotional core of the movie is Sam’s (Tom Hanks) grief for his late wife Maggie and his young son Jonah’s inability to process losing his mother. The film’s famous long-distance romantic tension between Sam and Annie (Meg Ryan) works because it is built on top of real, carefully depicted mourning. It follows a widower slowly, hesitantly opening himself back up to the possibility of love without ever suggesting his grief had an expiration date. Nora Ephron gives Sam’s late-night radio confession real vulnerability rather than treating it as just a cute plot device, and it becomes the emotional catalyst for everything that follows.

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The movie has endured as one of the genre’s defining entries decades later, precisely because of its handling of grief in such a mature, realistic manner. Its romance feels earned rather than convenient because the film takes real time to sit with loss first, letting Sam’s healing, not his falling in love, become the actual engine driving the story toward its famous Empire State Building ending. Annie and Sam barely speak to each other for most of the film, which only underscores that the real story was always about a father and a son learning how to move forward. The romance, when it finally arrives, feels like a natural byproduct of that healing rather than its whole point.

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Release Date

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June 24, 1993

Runtime

105 minutes

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Director

Nora Ephron

Writers

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David S. Ward, Nora Ephron, Jeff Arch

Producers

Gary Foster

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