The recent back-to-back box-office success of Obsession and Backroomsappears to have overshadowed a couple of other horror movies. The more recent of the two, Passenger, didn't really stand a chance anyway. It had the misfortune of opening in the wake of Curry Baker's movie, which had already become a box-office sensation. However, a slightly older horror movie opened to excellent reviews and seemed to be doing just fine commercially when Obsession and Backrooms rewrote the rulebook. The movie in question recently debuted on digital platforms for rent and purchase, and immediately found a spot on the domestic top 10 chart.

After nearly a decade in the box-office doldrums, Liam Neeson bounced back a few months ago with the hit spoof movie The Naked Gun. It emerged as his first film since 2018's The Commuter to gross over $100 million at the global box office. Neeson has spent the last decade churning out his trademark action potboilers, while also starring in smaller-scale dramas that have received positive reviews but struggled to attract a large audience. Among these movies is a slick neo-noir that Neeson headlined in 2014; the movie was designed as a possible franchise-starter, but was apparently not successful enough to warrant sequels.

When the management at Prime Video changed some months ago, one of the first orders of business was to halt production on the Citadelspin-offs. Two had already been produced and released as part of an ambitious plan to start a shared universe, a plan that will likely go down in history as one of the biggest swings and misses of the streaming era. The latest Nielsen report for streaming and linear television is in, and things aren't looking good for the "mothership" Citadel series. The latest report tracks viewership in the week of May 4 to May 10, during which The Boys claimed the number two spot behind La Brea with more than 1 billion minutes watched. The Boys had been struggling to compete against HBO Max's The Pittfor the last few weeks, but it seems to have picked up the pace ahead of its finale. Remember, the Nielsen report, especially for streaming, is delayed by roughly a month.

It wasn't too long ago when Edward Berger broke out as one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood thanks to his highly decorated remake of the greatest anti-war stories ever told, All Quiet on the Western Front. Berger's movie was based on a novel of the same name, which has been adapted into several popular films dating back nearly a century. The latest version, which was released by Netflix in 2022, went on to win four Oscars and seven BAFTAs. It came only a few years after Sam Mendes' highly acclaimed 1917, which also owed a creative debt to All Quiet on the Western Front. However, another equally influential anti-war movie was released nearly seven decades ago, and it has since cemented itself as perhaps the greatest anti-war movie of all time.

Prime Video delivered the perfect antidote to its recently concluded superhero series The Boys, which underwhelmed critics and audiences with its series finale. The streamer's latest superhero offering, Spider-Noir, has the added benefit of featuring an acting icon and being based on one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. The new show delivered exactly the results expected of it in its midweek debut, even though it failed to overthrow Prime Video's current number one title. The holdover hit defied the odds to deliver one of the streamer's biggest-ever debuts. It currently trails only The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Fallout, which have an obvious built-in fan-following. With 36 million views in under two weeks, the steamy new romance series has outperformed legacy titles on Prime Video such as Reacher and The Summer I Turned Pretty.

The phenomenal success of director Curry Barker's Obsession seems to have fueled an online debate about whom the "real" villain of the movie is. The answer is obvious, of course, but people enjoy arguing with each other. A similar back-and-forth erupted, to a much lesser degree, exactly a decade ago. The discourse that time revolved around the same idea: consent, and the movie's questionable understanding of it. While Obsession makes it quite clear that the male protagonist is, in fact, evil, the 2016 movie wasn't as confident about labeling its own hero as the creep that he was. And that's primarily why certain members of the audience took offense to it. The movie in question was a massive box-office hit that cost $150 million to produce, but here's the kicker: it might eventually be overtaken by the tiny-budget Obsession.

Perhaps the last movie that needed to be Nolanized was Total Recall. The goofiness is inherent to what made that film such a hit with audiences and critics. Turning it into a self-serious meditation on the refugee crisis proved a fatal decision, and viewers noticed immediately. The Total Recall remake didn't do very well at the box office, nor did it appeal to critics and audiences. It remains one of the least remembered big-budget Hollywood movies of the post-Nolan era, where every film had to be dark and grounded. Some, like Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, worked. Others — like Total Recall and Snow White and the Huntsman— not so much.

June is going to be a terrific month for fans of classic Hollywood movies, with landmark titles such as the Southern Gothic noir thriller The Night of the Hunter, Stanley Kubrick's anti-war masterpiece Paths of Glory, and the single greatest legal drama ever made being released on Prime Video. The legal drama was released nearly seven decades ago to universal acclaim, but had an underwhelming response at the box office. The movie earned three nominations in key Oscar categories — Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Screenplay — and is now regarded as one of the best films ever made. The movie was adapted by Reginald Rose from his own 1954 teleplay, which has since inspired at least one Bollywood film, a Chinese drama, a television movie, and an episode of Family Guy.

Despite a glowing track record as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Chris Hemsworth has had a rather difficult time trying to grab a piece of pre-existing franchises. The actor played a memorable supporting role in Paul Feig's Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, which underperformed at the box office for reasons other than its quality. He also played a supporting role in George Miller's long-awaited prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which underperformed commercially as well. He also voiced Optimus Prime in Transformers One, which you probably forgot came out less than two years ago. However, arguably his least successful attempt to join a new franchise remains Men in Black: International.

After debuting theatrically barely two weeks ago, Guy Ritchie's new movie is already available to rent or purchase on PVOD. This sort of narrow theatrical window is getting rarer these days, as studios and exhibitors try to correct the mistakes of the last few years. Universal, for instance, has committed to a four-week theatrical window for its movies starting this year; this will increase to at least five weekends from next year onward. So, for a major action movie starring globally renowned stars and with an A-list director at the helm to be released on home video merely 17 days after its release seems, on the surface, like a step in the other direction. The movie's underwhelming box-office performance and mediocre reviews probably had something to do with it.

As Johnny Depp mounts a return to the mainstream following a decade spent on the sidelines because of personal legal issues, one of his last real hits is coming to Prime Video. The movie can ease the audience back into Depp's corner, provided that they're interested in being there. The crime drama was released at a time when Depp was experiencing something of a purple patch at the box office. In a few years, his commercial pull would take a major hit. This was one of the many reasons why studios severed ties with him when his legal troubles overshadowed every other aspect of his career.

As one 97%‑rated series ends, Apple TV is enjoying the success of another. The new show couldn't be more different from the first, even though both have identical scores on the aggregator website and are fundamentally comedies. The first of these two new shows is Margo's Got Money Troubles, and together with the second, they're proving that Apple's slate of excellent content isn't limited to the sci-fi genre. Over the years, Apple has become somewhat synonymous with shows such as Severance, Foundation, Silo, and more recently, Pluribus. The streak continued on May 29 with Star City, a companion piece to the streamer's first-ever sci-fi series, For All Mankind.