Jacob Elordi has shared a funny anecdote about why “Euphoria” creator and director Sam Levinson brought him back for the show’s third installment.

The actor joked that Levinson made the decision simply to “torture” him, referring to the treatment his character, Nate Jacobs, receives at the hands of the ruthless antagonist Naz.

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Elordi’s time on “Euphoria” may have come to an end, but the actor still vividly remembers how bizarre his character’s final chapter became.

Throughout much of Season 3, Nate endured a series of brutal ordeals at the hands of creditor Naz, including beatings, having his pinkie toe severed and, at one point, being buried alive in a coffin.

Reflecting on everything his character went through, Elordi recently joked that being “tortured” was the reason Levinson brought him back for the show’s third season.

“I think Sam [Levinson] brought me back to torture me,” Elordi said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to guest host and “Euphoria” costar Colman Domingo. “It was like, six weeks of me just getting beat by a seven-foot guy. I was just running the whole time.”

Elordi Spent ‘Two Days’ Trapped Inside A Coffin

Among the ordeals, being locked inside the coffin appeared to be the toughest for Elordi, given the length of time he had to spend in the confined space.

“I got locked in a coffin for two days straight with prosthetics and a fake tongue, and I couldn’t see out of my eyes,” Elordi told Domingo.

At one point during filming, Levinson even added a snake to the coffin for the sequence leading up to Nate’s gruesome death.

In the scene, the snake slithered down the breathing tube Naz had given Nate before delivering a fatal bite, sealing his fate before anyone could find and rescue him.

Jacob Elordi Says His Snake Co-star Was Like A Puppy

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While such a scene would typically be challenging for an actor, Elordi said he was completely comfortable sharing the coffin with the snake.

“He had a very nice personality. He was very docile and very sleepy,” Elordi said of the snake. “I don’t think he’d had a lot of sun.”

He ended up repeatedly nudging the snake in an effort to make it more active, as the scene required the animal to appear menacing. However, it seemed completely uninterested in cooperating. “He was like a little dog,” Elordi also recalled. “He just kept curling up at my feet. He’d drop down the tube, and then he’d sort of slither down and then he’d find a little warm spot.”

The Actor Calls Nate Jacobs’ Death A ‘Cool Way To Go’

In an HBO behind-the-scenes video, Elordi reflected on his character’s death, calling it a “cool way to go.”

“Nate is somebody who’s made so many mistakes and so many dark choices; it’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to,” the actor added.

“I had to go into this coffin, my shoulders were touching the side, and I couldn’t move my arms, and then they would drill the lid on, and it would get dark,” he continued.

In the clip, Elordi also admitted he had mixed feelings about “Euphoria” coming to an end, especially considering how much the series has helped shape his career.

“It’s a bittersweet thing. This show is a massive part of not just my career, but my life. It’s been amazing, and I’m so proud being a part of this,” he noted.

Sam Levinson Praises Jacob Elordi For Embracing Snake Scene

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Speaking about the scene, Levinson gave Elordi “enormous credit” for embracing the creative decision despite how bizarre it was.

In a previous interview with Esquire, Levinson also defended his choice to give Nate such an unconventional death. He said the ending aligned with what he believed was the most satisfying form of karma for the character, offering fans the reckoning they had long hoped to see following Nate’s actions throughout the previous seasons.

“There’s this kind of funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma,” he told the outlet, “and with that in mind, I always think, ‘Well, how can I give it to them? How can I give them what they want, but make it so horrific and anxiety-inducing that by the time it happens, the audience isn’t so sure they wanted it?’”

As explored in that now infamous Family Guy clip where Peter confesses he didn’t care for The Godfather because “it insists upon itself,” there are sometimes movies that get praised, and you hear they’re great, and then you watch them, and they don’t do much for you. Worst-case scenario, you might well find yourself thinking they’re totally overrated, like, if you hate a movie most people love… but what about when it’s not quite so dramatic?

Enter the following movies, which are generally well-regarded, and here, they’re going to be acknowledged as just fine. More along the lines of “good” than “great.” You won’t like seeing certain films here, but if you clicked on this, you accepted it might make you angry before that click was completed. Admit it. Also, if you don’t like the detached writing style here, just pretend phrases like “I believe” and “I feel” are sprinkled throughout, because this is subjective, even if it’s not being written in the first-person. And, if you have further complaints and wish to voice them, please click here.

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‘Opening Night’ (1977)

Image via Faces Distribution

Like a fair few movies that are going to be mentioned here, Opening Night is very long, perhaps even to the point where it’s a bit self-indulgent. John Cassavetes was a filmmaker who very much did his own thing, and was a trailblazer as far as independent directors went for sure, but his movies are sometimes easier to admire than they are to genuinely feel engaged by. Opening Night is one such film.

It’s a rambling movie about a group of people involved with putting on a stage play, and as that titular opening night gets closer, they all get a bit more stressed about all the drama in their lives. Kind of. It doesn’t really build in the same way that better Cassavetes films like A Woman Under the Influence or the underrated Gloria do. But, like those films, Opening Night does boast a strong lead performance by Gena Rowlands, so that’s definitely something.

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‘Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ (1975)

Image via Olympic Films

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Credit where credit’s due, Chantal Akerman was surprisingly young when she directed the incredibly mature Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. At least it’s fair to say that it doesn’t feel like it was directed by someone who was still in the first half of their 20s while making it, because this is a film about a middle-aged woman and the emptiness of her existence.

It’s a movie about a routine that gets followed, but then unravels, albeit incredibly slowly. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is like an anti-epic, running for almost 3.5 hours while spanning a small period of time, having very few characters, and also being purposefully repetitive until, eventually, it’s not. It’s arduous to get through, and it’s supposed to be, but still. It asks a lot of you, as a viewer, and doesn’t give you much in return, but then again, the titular character sacrifices a lot in her life, and gets little in return, so yes… very clever, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. You’re still a waste of time, but at least you’re a thematically effective waste of time.

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‘Secrets & Lies’ (1996)

Image via FilmFour Distributors

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A little like John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh has a distinctive style that he pretty consistently sticks to, with about as much variety as you get being the fact that some of his films are dramedies, or dark comedies, while others are more straightforward dramas. In either instance, there’s usually a good deal of realism and solemnity, with a slow pace usually found alongside all that dourness.

Secrets & Lies is one of many movies of his that aren’t particularly exciting or entertaining, yet it’s not really trying to be, because this is a drama about what happens after a woman connects with her birth mother and finds she wasn’t who she expected. And there are some secrets and lies that get kept, and then get revealed. What a twist. Look, it’s okay. It’s fine, it’s cool.

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‘All About Eve’ (1950)

Image via 20th Century Fox

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There was a lot Joseph L. Mankiewicz did throughout the years he was active, and he did conclude his filmmaking career on an incredibly strong note, thanks to Sleuth (1972) being his final directorial effort. All About Eve might well be the most celebrated film he directed, though, from about two decades earlier. It’s the one that won a bunch of Academy Awards, at least.

It’s a movie about people being endlessly snarky at each other for a runtime that nears 2.5 hours, for some reason. If you click with the dialogue here, and like the actors, it’s probably glorious, but if you find it’s not really working for you early on, then little about how it plays out later is going to win you over. You can single out numerous elements here that are technically well executed, sure, but as to what they all add up to… not sure. Just not sure. Don’t get this one. Help.

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‘Ordet’ (1955)

Image via A/S Palladium

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Ordet is a very slow-moving drama about faith, and even if you’re not particularly wild about the film, it does feel like it achieves what it (seemingly) set out to do. There are some family members who are all dealing with following their religion in their own personal ways, and they grapple with some very personal issues very internally, so Ordet does demand a viewer’s attention, for what that’s worth.

It’s not a particularly eye-opening or interesting film, though, unless you find yourself really relating to one or more of the personal journeys being undertaken here. It has something of a distinctive atmosphere, and so maybe you’ll find Ordet kind of haunting at times, but it’s also likely going to be too hard to penetrate – or really care about – for other people.

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‘3 Women’ (1977)

Image via 20th Century Fox

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If you prefer psychological dramas to psychological thrillers, and don’t mind things getting quite surreal at points, then 3 Women might be your kind of thing. Robert Altman was definitely doing something a little unexpected here, which has to be admired, since so many of his best-known movies have huge ensemble casts and feel very spontaneous, while 3 Women has fewer main characters, and there is also a greater feeling of purposefulness to it all.

That being said, it does still drift and seems keen to confound at times, but there are probably things to unpack here if you’re willing to put in the time analyzing and/or rewatching it. It’s got that haunting quality to it, which is something, even if, in the moment, it’s a difficult film to really get immersed in and blown away by.

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‘Rear Window’ (1954)

Image via Paramount Pictures

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The good thing about Alfred Hitchcock is that you can find yourself slightly underwhelmed by a couple of movies of his, here and there, and you’ve still got so many more to dig into. He was prolific for sure, and he made a number of movies that are pretty much masterpieces during that time, so it was a bit of a quality and quantity kind of thing. He got stuff done on both fronts.

With Rear Window, this one is often considered one of his very best, but since it’s here, and what “here” is has already been established… uh… you know. It’s good. Like, actually, conceptually, it’s amazing. To have a character who’s stuck in an apartment, and then filming pretty much the entire movie from his perspective, it’s all very immersive. It’s just a shame that much of the film’s so slow, and it plays out like a mystery story where there’s little to no actual mystery as to what’s happened, and what’s going to happen. Also, the part near the end where the footage of people running and reacting to an alarming sight is so goofy in a way it’s probably not supposed to be.

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‘The Leopard’ (1963)

Yes, The Leopard is a lengthy film, at just over three hours, so it can be expected to feel long… but not this long, right? It goes on and on, perhaps to reflect a certain emptiness within the privileged lifestyles many of its characters live, but there’s an eventual repetition when it comes to how it drives home that point again, and again, and again.

Also, for all the lavish costumes and party scenes, there’s one battle set piece early on that’s woefully directed and executed, looking like a film within a film (like, if one of the characters were directing a movie somehow, and they weren’t good at directing, you might show such a sloppy scene and have it be a fake-out; a movie within a movie). Though longer, you’re better off watching War and Peace, another epic from the 1960s that has better scenes of lavishness and opulence, and then it also has war sequences that actually look impressive.

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‘Cries and Whispers’ (1972)

Image via Svensk Filmindustri

Cries and Whispers is noteworthy for being one of the (relatively) few films not in the English language to be nominated for Best Picture, doing so decades before one actually ended up winning Best Picture (2019’s Parasite). It’s also an Ingmar Bergman film, so you can rely on it being emotionally intense and visually engaging while boasting at least a couple of good performances.

It’s also really tedious, to be honest. Like, it’s well-made to some extent, so calling it an outright terrible movie would be dramatic, yet it’s hard to see what other people see in this. So many other Bergman films are worth your time before this one. It’s too mopey, despair-filled in a borderline comical way, and almost like a parody of arthouse cinema, rather than a genuinely great example of an arthouse film.

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‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (1962)

Image via Paramount Pictures

Saving what’s probably the most brazen hot take for last, here’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. If you were still waiting to hurl rotten produce, and made it this far without making any of it airborne, feel free to fling all that moldy stuff now. But also, this is still a good Western, and is admirable for being a little heavier and weightier than your typical John Wayne film.

He’s fine here, as he usually is, and James Stewart is also good, because James Stewart couldn’t really help but be good, whatever he was in. If you’re in the mood for something deliberately dry and somber, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance might scratch that itch. There are far better subversive Westerns, and it’s not nearly as good as The Searchers, which was another John Wayne and John Ford collaboration that stands as an early revisionist Western of sorts, but this is fine. It’s a tricky one to get excited about, but you can more or less see why it’s considered a classic.

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

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Release Date

April 22, 1962

Runtime

123 Minutes

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Director

John Ford

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Writers

James Warner Bellah, Willis Goldbeck, Dorothy M. Johnson

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Bob Dylan might have built one of the greatest discographies in music history, but with more than 700 songs to his name, some are bound to slip through the cracks. Since releasing his debut album in 1962, Dylan has gone through countless creative and personal phases, from his marriages and bold artistic reinventions to a quieter life away from the spotlight.

Along the way, plenty of songs—both released and unreleased—have quietly faded into obscurity. That doesn’t make them any less brilliant. In fact, some of Dylan’s most overlooked tracks rank among the finest he’s ever written. Without further ado, here are 10 forgotten Bob Dylan songs that are masterpieces, ranked.

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“Sign on the Window” (1970)

By 1970, at just 29 years old, Dylan had already accomplished everything a young musician could dream of: a record label contract, nine studio albums (with several becoming essential pieces of American music), and the creative freedom to pursue whatever genre he wanted. There was only one thing still missing: contentment.

As part of his move into country music, “Sign on the Window” is a warm piano ballad that shows that, despite everything the music industry says about success never being enough, Dylan simply longs for a quiet, ordinary life. Isolation and heartbreak may be inevitable, but by the final verse, he realizes it’s the simple things in life that matter most.

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“Moonshiner” (1963)

“Moonshiner” might not be Dylan’s original song, but he sings it with genuine sincerity and deep respect for the people at its center. In the song, alcohol becomes a symbol of working-class communities that have long been overlooked by society. Historically, moonshiners produced liquor without government permits, making it an illegal trade.

But Dylan doesn’t villainize the people who choose that life, nor does he romanticize breaking the law in search of fortune. Instead, he focuses on the hardships they endure. Being a moonshiner offers a sense of freedom, but it also traps people in a cycle of crime and poverty that feels impossible to escape—lasting, in the song’s words, “for seventeen long years.”

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“Sweetheart Like You” (1983)

“Sweetheart Like You” sounds like a typical love song about meeting a woman in a seedy place: “But what’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?” The first half recreates a conversation between Dylan and the woman, making it feel intimate and personal.

But beyond the surface, the song is about someone caught in a world where people constantly trade their morals for success. Even the kindest people can be worn down by a system that punishes loyalty instead of rewarding it. As Dylan puts it, “They say that patriotism is the last refuge”—a line that hints at how blind idealism can be misused for someone else’s personal gains.

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“Up to Me” (1974)

We can’t control the cards life deals us, but we can choose how we play them—hence the title, “Up to Me.” For the longest time, Dylan sang about how unfair the world can be. But “Up to Me” reinforces the idea that resistance can also mean taking control of what happens next in our lives.

Even when everything goes “from bad to worse,” and life gives you little reason to smile—”In fourteen months I’ve only smiled once”—nobody can decide what we do next except ourselves. Had he followed what everyone else thought was the right way to live, Dylan declares with dramatic conviction, “the heart inside me would’ve died.”

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“Red River Shore” (1997)

“Red River Shore” shows how much Dylan’s songwriting had matured from his early days. The Dylan of the ’60s experimented with surrealism, layered meanings, and stream of consciousness. By the ’90s, the much older Dylan had grown more reflective, opting for narrative structures that retell different scenarios while immortalizing each moment in its essence.

Dylan pieces together little quirks and intimate moments he shares with his lover. Every stanza in “Red River Shore” feels like a memory, moving naturally from the smallest details, like what he wears, to the best advice she’s given him. But by the end, it all comes together on a bittersweet note: nobody could truly see him except the girl from the Red River shore.

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“Abandoned Love” (1985)

The best heartbreak songs are often the ones based on real pain. Inspired by Dylan’s failing relationship with his then-wife, Sara Lownds, “Abandoned Love” grasps the moment when a romance can no longer be saved, yet letting go still feels impossible. Rather than recounting specific events, Dylan expresses his emotions through surreal imagery.

From being deceived by “the clown inside of me,” suggesting he was foolish to believe the relationship could survive, to his “patron saint… fighting with a ghost,” implying that even faith cannot rescue him, he blames himself throughout the song. Despite every attempt to disguise his feelings, his heart remains certain: it’s “a-tellin’ me I love ya still.”

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“Series of Dreams” (1991)

“Series of Dreams” opens with rolling drums and soaring guitars that immediately pull listeners into a dreamlike adventure. Fittingly, the song is literally about the metaphysical sensation of entering the dreamworld. As Bob Dylan himself explained, there’s no deeper rationale behind them—”nothing too very scientific”—because dreams simply happen.

Like much of Dylan’s work, “Series of Dreams” recreates an experience. The song seizes the fragmented, mysterious nature of dreams, where the subconscious becomes an unexplored landscape. Logic disappears; there is “no exit in any direction,” and “anything you’re holding on to, they’ll just collapse.” Instead of searching for meaning, Dylan invites listeners to surrender to the moment.

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“Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” (1978)

Another song inspired by Dylan’s breakup with Lownds, “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” is the singer’s desperate plea as he realizes that, like the relationship itself, he’s far from perfect. Dylan once said that a person’s greatest battle is against “the enemy within,” and that idea shapes the song as he wrestles with guilt, temptation, and self-doubt.

Sometimes mourning a relationship isn’t just about losing someone you love, but grieving the person you could’ve been. Drawing on Biblical imagery, Delta blues, and a gospel-tinged sound, Dylan turns heartbreak into a spiritual struggle rather than simply blaming his former lover, making it one of his most cathartic songs.

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“Caribbean Wind” (1985)

An unreleased track from Shot of Love, “Caribbean Wind” is one of Dylan’s songs from his early ’80s Christian era. Where there’s faith, there’s desire. And in a world full of turmoil, desire becomes even more tempting, none more so than the woman Dylan describes as “the Rose of Sharon from Paradise Lost.”

With images of “armies on the march,” famines, and earthquakes, personal love still survives despite a world filled with spiritual anxiety. The recurring chorus, where the “Caribbean winds” keep “fanning the flames in the furnace of desire,” shows that his feelings refuse to fade. Dylan rewrote and revised the song several times, but it was never released on the album.

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“Angelina” (1981)

One of his most mysterious songs, “Angelina,” is up to anybody’s interpretation. Written after his Gospel Tour, the song attracted attention because each stanza contains an intentional rhyming scheme. However, each line doesn’t seem to connect to another, with no overarching theme to link them all together.

The lyrics jump from personal confessions like “it’s always been my nature to take chances” to strange, dreamlike visions filled with biblical imagery. Giants, the “pale white horse,” and an “angel with four faces” all echo the Book of Revelation, but Dylan never explains what any of it means. Whether Angelina is a real woman, a symbol of faith, or something else entirely is left up to the listener.

The Dark Winds are blowing in for another season of AMC’s acclaimed 1970s-set neo-noir mystery series. Jessica Matten, who stars on the series as Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito, is hyping up the new season, with one particular scene serving as a “career high” for the actor. Collider’s Perri Nemiroff caught up with Matten at San Diego Comic Con, where she’s promoting her new animated movie, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender.

Based on the Southwest-set novels of the late Tony Hillerman, Dark Winds follows a trio of Navajo Tribal Police officers in the 1970s; veteran Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), his longtime deputy Manuelito (Matten), and newcomer Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). Over the course of the show’s four seasons, the initial rivalry between Manuelito and Chee has turned to romance; having endured a bout of “ghost sickness” and a life-or-death battle with a lethal survivalist assassin in the last season, their relationship has only become stronger. That’s set to continue in the show’s fifth season.

It won’t be too long before that new season hits AMC, as Matten reveals that season 5 is now in the can, having wrapped shooting last month. And while she can’t say much about the upcoming season’s plot, she can reveal that the new season was a personal milestone for herself, and gave her an experience she’d never had before as an actor:

“The producers pulled me aside, and they said they think it’s a career-high performance for me in Season 5. I’m very good as an actor at separating my personal life from the characters I play, and I have a lot of coping techniques for that, and it was the first time where those lines really did get blurred. You hear about it so many times through other performers and how they couldn’t shake off a character. I’m a little tough about it. I’m like, “I’ll just shake it off. It’s fine.” And I experienced for the first time what they were talking about. So, I will say it’s so not characteristic of who I am as a performer, going into Season 5.”

And although the series is now in its fifth season, Matten isn’t experiencing any fatigue. She’s grateful that the show exists as a space for Indigenous actors and creators to tell their stories, beyond the confines of a conventional detective series.

“Because we’ve been running for so long, you think you know these characters, and so it was surprising for me to say that, being like, “Oh, I did not expect this,” especially for Dark Winds. But I’m really grateful because, with it being one of the few Indigenous shows out there, globally seen and acknowledged, it’s a big deal for me. And to be able, as an actor, to play a role with so many layers, I think it’s going to be something. I think all of my costars are doing an incredible job of also showing the different many facets and the layers of the human soul, just being a Native person, or a person, a human being, in general.”

Season 5 of Dark Winds will premiere on AMC in 2027.

What Is ‘Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender’?

A continuation of the acclaimed animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar Aang is set thirteen years after that series’ finale, and sees Aang (Eric Nam), a man with the ability to control the element of air who believed he was the last of his kind, discover a long-lost fellow airbender in the form of Tagah (Dave Bautista). Learning of a powerful staff that could restore the airbender’s lost culture, his old friends, including Katara (Matten), Sokka (Román Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Zuko (Steven Yeun) unite to aid him in his quest, even as the sinister organization known as The Denied seeks it for their own evil ends. It will debut exclusively on Paramount+ on July 25.

Season 5 of Dark Winds will premiere in 2027. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

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Release Date

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June 12, 2022

Network

AMC

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Directors

Michael Nankin

Writers

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John Wirth, Steven Judd, Max Hurwitz, Rhiana Yazzie, Thomas Brady, DezBaa’

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By TeeJay Small
| Published 2 hours ago

Though I’ve had many critiques of the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the years, it’s impossible to deny the scope and impact that these movies have accomplished. Sometimes I think we take for granted just how much coordination, logistics, and careful planning has gone into a decades-long movie universe that delivers such hits as Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. Even still, not every move made by the architects of the franchise has paid off, as Marvel head Kevin Feige would be quick to admit. In fact, Feige recently sat down with the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss his handling of Mahershala Ali’s Blade film, concluding “I’m feeling … like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala.”

The Blade That Got Away

Feige didn’t officially confirm that the Mahershala Ali Blade reboot is dead in the water, but his comments, paired with the fact that we’ve had virtually no updates about the project in years, suggest that the film will never hit the box office. This is obviously a massive disappointment to fans, since the Blade character is one of the greatest comic book characters to ever be adapted for the screen. Wesley Snipes famously bolstered the franchise for an epic (if slightly dated) trilogy back in the late 90s and early 2000s, long before the MCU had even kicked off.

Ironically, Feige and company had the perfect opportunity to trojan horse the new Blade into the MCU with 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which featured a cameo appearance from Snipes in the iconic leather duster. The Marvel creative head did mention during his podcast interview that he was proud of how that appearance shook out, though it seemed to weigh heavily on him that he couldn’t organize the new Blade film to coincide with Deadpool & Wolverine‘s release.

In case you’re not up to date on the timeline here, Mahershala Ali’s Blade reboot was initially announced over seven years ago. That’s back before the COVID-19 pandemic, before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and long before GTA VI was given an official release window. Since then, the film has languished in development hell, with multiple writers and directors departing the project over creative differences. Variety reports that the film has fumbled no less than five screenwriters, and insiders have still been unable to confirm whether a completed screenplay has been locked in.

Kevin Feige’s official explanation for the film’s failure is Marvel’s aggressive over-expansion into Disney+ limited series. He even went so far as to comment that “for the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality” regarding his own prioritization of streaming shows over Blade. So the next time you’re laying in bed at night, tossing and turning with anxiety about the times you’ve screwed up at work, just remember that the guy who turned Marvel into the biggest cinematic profit mill in history experiences imposter syndrome too.

With The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan spent a reported $250 million and every available inch of IMAX 70mm film to drag Homer into the multiplex. But, before a single frame rolled, Nolan did the thing every serious director does with a star-studded cast and a story burdened by big expectations: he handed out homework. Three films, specifically, that he wanted stars like Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, and Zendaya to sit with before they picked up a spear.

The Odyssey is dense with the influence of other films, and Nolan has been unusually open about where some of it comes from. Those three assigned titles are the ones he’s shared on record. Look closely, and you can find plenty more: David Lean‘s boundless deserts, the sword-and-sandal epics that made a Greek myth bankable again, one of the director’s own recent blockbusters, even a monster movie still warm from a Netflix-backed Oscar run. The list of must-watch movies below traces all of it, starting with the three films Nolan named himself.

‘Andrei Rublev’ (1966)

Image via Mosfilm

Andrei Tarkovsky‘s three-hour-plus film, Andrei Rublev, follows a medieval icon painter drifting through a Russia that’s coming apart at the seams. It takes two decades, famine, and a brutal Tatar raid to set the stakes for Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) to lose faith in his art and stop painting. But then, he watches a young man strain to cast an enormous church bell and finds his reason to begin again. It’s all shot in long, patient takes that hold on mud and faces, and Nolan screened it for his cast because of that texture.

With The Odyssey, Nolan wanted an ancient world with weight to it, where the light and the faces belong to the era and not to a green screen. Odysseus (Damon), like Rublev, is a man ground down by cruelty and by the sheer length of his own road, and the film needs you to believe he has lived through every brutal year of it.

‘Ran’ (1985)

Image via Toho

With Ran, Akira Kurosawa took King Lear to feudal Japan and set it on fire. An aging warlord hands his kingdom to his sons and then watches his family and his country tear each other apart, in some of the largest and most punishing battle scenes ever filmed. The armies march in blocks of pure color, and the wind moves through everything, bending grass and banners and smoke. Nolan zeroed in on exactly that, praising the movie’s use of “landscape” and the “banners flapping in the wind.”

It’s a natural fit. Nolan builds his films out of real places at real scale, and The Odyssey is about a hero at the mercy of forces far larger than himself. Kurosawa supplies the template for how to translate that on-screen.

‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (1988)

Image via Universal Pictures

Martin Scorsese‘s sweaty, doubt-ridden, once-scandalous take on Jesus (a raw Willem Dafoe) tells a familiar myth from the inside out, as the story of a man arguing with his own destiny. It was protested and picketed on release. It’s also one of the boldest things Scorsese ever made. Nolan called it “a fresh and accessible window into history” and admitted the technical work Scorsese was doing struck him as “quite inspiring.”

The connection isn’t hard to trace. Odysseus is a hero who lies, cheats, and stalls his way home, and Scorsese’s blueprint for a flawed legend given a human pulse is key to making The Odyssey‘s sheer density palatable.

‘Interstellar’ (2014)

Sometimes the biggest influence on a Nolan movie is another Nolan movie. Interstellar sends a father into space to save the human race and loses him in time, so that every hour out there costs him years with the children he left on Earth. The whole movie yearns for a homecoming that always feels heartbreakingly out of reach.

Swap the wormhole for the wine-dark sea, and you’re most of the way to The Odyssey. Both follow a man desperate to get back, and both let time do the cruelest work, piling up while he is powerless to stop it. Odysseus loses ten years to the gods; Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) loses decades in the span of an afternoon. Nolan has clearly been mapping this particular journey for a while.

‘Gladiator’ (2000)

Image via Universal Pictures

“Are you not entertained?” turned out to be a rhetorical question with a very obvious answer in this Ridley Scott banger. The director dragged the sword-and-sandal epic out of the grave and stood it back on its feet with Russell Crowe playing a betrayed Roman general fighting through the blood and sand of the arena toward home… and revenge. The film became a sensation, winning Best Picture and reminding Hollywood that the ancient world could still fill a theater.

Every toga-draped blockbuster since has walked through the door Gladiator opened. Without its success, no studio would hand Nolan a quarter of a billion dollars to put a Greek myth on IMAX screens 26 years later.

‘Troy’ (2004)

Image via Warner Bros.

This is the most obvious comparison on the list, and the one Nolan may be subtly answering. Wolfgang Petersen took The Iliad, cast Brad Pitt as an oiled, sulking Achilles, and swung for grand, star-driven spectacle. Because of that, Troy landed somewhere between genuinely stirring and faintly ridiculous.

The Odyssey picks up the very next chapter of the same story, which makes the contrast feel almost pointed. Where Troy went for beefcakes and battlefields, Nolan seems to be after the interior wear of the myth, the psychology of a man who can’t stop scheming even when scheming is what keeps him from his wife and son. It is the same source material approached from the opposite direction.

‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962)

Image via Columbia Pictures

If Nolan has a sacred text, this is it. Lean drops Peter O’Toole‘s unreadable T. E. Lawrence into a vast desert and shoots it on 70mm, until the sheer size of the landscape presses down on you in your seat. Nolan has cited it for years as the film that shaped the way he thinks about scale. In fact, the whole IMAX 70mm bet of The Odyssey comes straight from Lawrence of Arabia: set a single small figure against an overwhelming world and let the size of the image do the work.

Even the heroes at the center of these two films feel connected. Both men are magnetic and evasive, half-turned into legend but never fully known by the people who follow them. You don’t really need a reason to watch this, one of the greatest films ever made, but Nolan just gave you one anyway.

‘Spartacus’ (1960)

Image via Universal International

Stanley Kubrick’s Roman masterpiece gave us Kirk Douglas as a slave leading a doomed revolt, and the famous moment when a captured army rises one man at a time to claim his name. Spartacus is a huge, crowd-filling spectacle with a real brain behind it. It’s not the Kubrick entry most associate with Nolan’s work, but it’s the one that connects best here.

The balance between cerebral and crowd-pleasing is what The Odyssey is after. Spartacus carries weighty ideas without ever shrinking from the size of its audience, which is the same line Nolan walks, in every film really, but especially here.

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

George Miller made two hours of near-wordless road chase with real vehicles hurled across real desert and virtually nothing faked that could instead be built and crashed for the camera. His Mad Max: Fury Road is a journey film that runs on pure motion and a myth told at full speed. Put it next to Nolan’s newest film and the fit is closer than you’d expect.

The director is a practical-effects true believer, and Fury Road is the modern peak of that faith. When The Odyssey puts its monsters and shipwrecks on screen, this is the tradition it draws from, the conviction that an audience can always feel when something on screen is tangible on set.

‘Frankenstein’ (2025)

Image via Netflix

The outlier here, and the newest by a wide margin. Guillermo del Toro finally made the film he had chased for more than a decade, with Oscar Isaac as an obsessive Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature he abandons. It’s a creation myth staged at full operatic scale and sent to Netflix last November. It shares nothing with Homer and everything with the moment Nolan is working in.

Frankenstein and The Odyssey arrived barely a year apart, two celebrated directors wagering enormous budgets on the idea that audiences still want an old myth told seriously, with real craft and real feeling behind it. And del Toro’s approach to his monsters — his love for them, his compassion, and his commitment to displaying their grotesque, awe-inspiring physicality — is echoed in how Nolan depicts his own mythic beasts. If The Odyssey has one clear peer in the current landscape, this is it.

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Frankenstein

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Release Date

October 17, 2025

Runtime

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149 Minutes

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Already mired in controversy long before its release, disowned by original screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, and hitting cinemas just as the O.J. Simpson murder case shocked the country, Natural Born Killers made a bloody splash in the summer of 1994. Oliver Stone’s tale of serial-killing lovebirds Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) Knox instantly sparked a classic 1980 and ’90s-style moral panic, as media figures blasted it for glamorizing violence and predicted a rash of killings inspired by the film.

But despite the moral hysteria, the picture was a pure satire — albeit one soaked in blood and psychedelics, shot and cut for maximum impact. Although Tarantino’s original script differed vastly from Stone’s final product, reading it makes clear that Natural Born Killers was always intended as a send-up of America’s culture of celebrity worship and the then-burgeoning true crime media ecosystem. And the film hit at just the right time to strike a very raw nerve with the public, given that it premiered shortly after the Jeffrey Dahmer case, the acquittal of the police tried for beating Rodney King and the subsequent L.A. riots, and at the height of tabloid television’s dominance.

Why Was ‘Natural Born Killers’ So Controversial?

Image via Warner Bros.

Considered one of the most controversial films in history, Natural Born Killers is derided even to this day not only for its violence, but for crimes carried out by its fans, as well as Stone’s admittedly broad-brush approach to satire. And the criticism of the film’s approach began before it was released: it was immediately slapped with an NC-17 by the MPAA, who required that four minutes of violence be cut to achieve an R-rating. And even after that, the famously mercurial film board gave one of their most feverish warnings ever regarding the rating: “For extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking images, and for strong language and sexuality.”

Seen today, it’s easy to find the MPAA’s thinking a bit laughable (one can easily see much more graphic violence in contemporary network dramas), but it was clearly Stone and cinematographer Robert Richardson‘s (Pulp Fiction) aggressive stylization that made every killing hit so hard. Writing at the time, Janet Maslin of the New York Times acknowledged the film’s technical qualities, but thought Stone himself was “enamored” by the psychopathic Mickey and Mallory and said the film’s point was ultimately “banal” and buried by Stone’s cinematic tricks.

More serious, however, are several alleged copycat crimes linked to the film over the past few decades. Several teen shooters have been self-professed superfans, including Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. One pair of teens in Oklahoma watched the film repeatedly on LSD, then went out to re-enact it, killing one man and rendering a woman paraplegic. Fourteen-year-old killer Barry Loukaitis shot two students and a teacher dead in his Washington state high school while allegedly dressed as Mickey. Multiple lawsuits have ground through the system over the years targeting Stone and the film’s producers and distributors, though all have ultimately wound up dismissed.

The dust has long settled over Natural Born Killers as a cultural lightning rod, but it offers the same dubious pleasures today as in 1994, and in some ways its bite has even sharpened. While its targets at the time were shows like Hard Copy and Larry King Live, the overriding message still rings true in our era of true crime entertainment.

Stone’s film remains an overpowering cinematic experience. Everything is turned up to 11 using mixed media, multiple film stocks, canted angles, music ranging from Nine Inch Nails to Edith Piaf, and over 3,000 cuts.Harrelson and Lewis embody their bloodthirsty yet hippie-esque murderers to an eerie degree, while Tom Sizemore plays one of the most repellent corrupt cops in film history. Tommy Lee Jones plays to the rafters as a psychotic prison warden whose head ends up on a pike and Rodney Dangerfield oozes hatefulness as Lewis’s sexually abusive father in an extended sequence filmed like a hallucinatory sitcom. It’s a lot to take in and still one of the definitive films of the 1990s.

And it may be even more relevant today. True crime content has never been more popular — or more lurid. According to Edison Research, some 84 percent of Americans consume some form of true crime media, with podcasts examining particular serial killers and grisly family annihilations reaching 19 million regular listeners. On top of that, social media allows true crime fanatics to air their every thought and theory, up to and including crushes on notorious killers. In fact, Robert Downey Jr.‘s manic Aussie tabloid host in Natural Born Killers can seem downright quaint when compared to today’s true crime obsessives and slew of stylish, bloody miniseries recreating famous killing sprees. So maybe it’s not that Natural Born Killers was ever “too much”…only that it arrived too soon.

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Release Date

August 26, 1994

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Runtime

118 minutes

Director

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Oliver Stone

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Camille Kostek is tired of keyboard warriors commenting on her appearance from behind a screen.

“Me wondering when I’m going to stop opening my phone to losers having conversations about my body,” Kostek, 34, wrote alongside a Thursday, July 23, TikTok video.

In the clip, the model shakes her head back and forth and slightly covers her mouth in disappointment.

“Go outside and get some sun!!” Kostek told her haters in the comments section.

Related: Rob Gronkowski Calls Camille Kostek the ‘Secret Sauce’ in Their Relationship

Rob Gronkowski gushed over his girlfriend, Camille Kostek, and her ability to keep their relationship afloat — even if she doesn’t want all the credit. During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly over Super Bowl weekend, Gronkowski, 34, said that Kostek, 31, is “definitely the secret sauce” in making their romance work. “She’s special,” he […]

The model wasn’t alone in her annoyance over being publicly ridiculed. Many of Kostek’s followers showed her support and fired back at the body-shamers as well.

“You are and have always been a baddie, please don’t let those trolls get to you ♥️,” one social media user replied.

Another person noted that Kostek is a “SI Swimsuit covergirl BY THE WAY 👏🏼 they can kick rocks ✌🏼,” referring to the model previously landing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover.

A third user replied, “You are literally so hot I don’t understand any different POV.”

“You are my BLUE PRINT babe — tell everyone to stfu,” a separate fan wrote.

“Girl, you are the type of woman that I want my daughter looking up too. Smart, driven, kind, beautiful!!!” a fifth TikToker added. “Pay no mind to the ones who enjoy tearing down others to make themselves feel better!!”

Kostek, who is a former New England Patriots cheerleader, has never been shy about speaking her mind and standing up for herself.

In fact, Kostek revealed during a June 2025 episode of the Honestly Cavallari: The Headline Tour during Kristin Cavallari’s stop in Boston that she didn’t always feel welcome among the NFL WAGs when dating boyfriend Rob Gronkowski.

Related: Rob Gronkowski Describes His Perfect Day With Girlfriend Camille Kostek

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Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Since officially retiring from the NFL in June 2022, Rob Gronkowski is still figuring out what work-life balance looks like in a post-football world.  Gronkowski, 35, who now works as an analyst for Fox Sports after 11 seasons with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, still keeps himself remarkably busy […]

“I felt like I was seen as a lesser than girlfriend because I didn’t have a ring on my finger,” Kostek told Cavallari, who was previously married to retired NFL quarterback Jay Cutler. “But you want to know what’s so interesting about that? The woman that’s coming to mind [who] judged me the most, she’s divorced.”

Kostek began dating Gronkowski, 37, in 2015 after meeting when she was a cheerleader for the Patriots and he played tight end for the team. (The couple didn’t go public until after she left the squad, due to rules between cheerleaders and football players.)

While Kostek didn’t get the warmest of welcomes from some of the Patriots players’ wives, she said that Tom Brady’s ex-wife Gisele Bündchen was always sweet and friendly.

Related: Rob Gronkowski Calls Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s Wedding ‘Top-Notch’

To no one’s surprise, Rob Gronkowski was the life of the party at Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s wedding.  “It was top-notch. Hats off to Taylor and Trav,” Gronkowski, 37, said Thursday, July 9, on Tubi’s The Other Football. “The dance floor, that’s the one thing, it was popping. It was popping.” Gronkowski’s cohost, NFL […]

“Honestly, what’s so special about Gisele is when we would cross paths, she would embrace me and talk to me like we’ve known each other forever,” she said during the reality special. “I only have great things to say about her.”

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Bündchen, 46, who divorced Brady, 48, in 2022 after 13 years of marriage, isn’t the only famous WAGs member that Kostek gets along with.

Kostek and Gronkowski were among the A-list guests in attendance at Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s July 3 nuptials at Madison Square Garden.

Kostek told People earlier this month that Swift, 36, looked like “a real-life princess” at the wedding.