The last time The A.V. Club spoke with Carey Mulligan, she was promoting her role in Paul Dano’s 2018 film Wildlife, where she played a housewife in 1960s Montana tentatively exploring the concept of self-determination. The last time this author wrote about Carey Mulligan, it was in a review of The Dig, a film where Mulligan stars as an invalid landowner in ’30s England whose fragile health forces her to the sidelines of her own life. All of which is to say that Mulligan’s role in Promising Young…

This January is lighter on schlock than normal. But then, it’s lighter on movies in general. While a few are creeping into theaters over the next four weeks, those plans could easily change between now and the day each is scheduled to open; as we’ve said pretty much every month since the pandemic started, the following list of upcoming titles could prove more generally upcoming than indicated. If it holds, audiences can expect a couple of crime-centric star vehicles, several acclaimed documentaries, and a…

Once upon a time, movies and television were mortal enemies, and pretty easy to tell apart, too. But the lines that once separated these two mediums have been blurring for a while now—a process that’s only been accelerated by the rise of streaming platforms, where everything is just content for the algorithm. And this year, as movie theaters closed their doors in the face of a deadly pandemic and people began watching everything at home, the distinction between big and…

People applauded a logo. I’d never seen that before. When the word “Lucasfilm” shimmered across the screen, my entire opening-weekend theater lost it. I might’ve applauded, too. The moment demanded a certain level of hysteria. We were here. It was happening. This day seemed like it would never arrive, but now there was a new Star Wars movie, and we were about to bear witness. Sure, some people had already seen it, and not all of them were ecstatic about what they’d…

Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, newspapers and magazines have been obsessed with constructing a mythology of a “forgotten” white working class through interviews at down-home diners and reportage from tractor pulls in deep red states. And if you’re someone who grew up in one of those states, it’s kind of funny to watch reporters from New York contorting themselves into pretzels trying to understand these exotic creatures in camouflage T-shirts. Funny, except that same effort has…

Halloween is imminent, and if you’re anything like us, you’re getting in the holiday spirit with some of your favorite seasonal staples—going back once more to those timeless classics of the scary-movie genre, like Michael Meyers returning to Haddonfield right on schedule. But while Halloween, like Halloween, never gets old, there are options for those looking to watch something new this October, something they don’t know line for line or kill for kill. On this week’s episode of Film Club,…