Awesome Movies

These days, when you want to shoot a film or TV series on location, green screens and CGI often replace real places. But you’ll still need a big space when you want to shoot with lots of extras. Great Big Story dropped by Atlas Studios, a massive film studio in Morocco, which has appeared in everything from Game of Thrones to Gladiator.

More than five decades ago, NASA landed the first humans ever on the moon. But prior to the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, Hollywood took us there thanks to a heaping helping of imagination and movie magic. The Royal Ocean Film Society looks back at some of these early examples of science fiction films.

(PG-13: Language) Editor Sleepy Skunk recently bestowed us with his regular end-of-year movie trailer mashup. But since it’s the end of a decade, he decided to do one better, and put together this epic and emotional montage of movie moments from the past 10 years as a bonus. How many of these movies did you see?

(PG-13) Despite Hollywood’s unhealthy obsession with reboots, remakes, and sequels, there have been some pretty great movies in the past decade. Little White Lies‘ Luís Azevedo put together this all-too-short compilation of some of the best, from The Grand Budapest Hotel to Mad Max: Fury Road to Get Out.

We love watching movies like Godzilla and Mothra and Ghidorah for their building-stomping monster action. But as Overly Sarcastic Productions points out, there’s way more depth to these films than just guys in lizard and moth costumes stepping on scale models of Tokyo.

(Gore) Produced by Guillermo del Toro, and directed by Scott Cooper (Black Mass), this creepy horror film follows the story of a gruesome death that at first appears to be an animal attack, but turns out to be something far more insidious – and the young boy who in some way is connected to it all.

Wonder Woman is back, and she’s headed to the mall. The sequel to one of DC’s better recent outings drops our hero into the decade of big hair and Rubik’s Cubes to save the world with her Lasso of Truth, and take on two new foes: Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) and The Cheetah (Kristen Wiig).

Director Dimitri Basil’s music video for the Joywave track Obsession is both a tribute to and a loving parody of vintage movie title sequences, featuring an array of convincing, but fake opening credits for spaghetti westerns, exploitation flicks, B-movies, and much more. Quentin Tarantino would be proud.

Go inside the story of one of the greatest science fiction/horror movies of all time. Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary delves into the origins of Ridley Scott’s tense, gory, and artful masterpiece. Legion M’s DVD and Blu-Ray discs come with a special limited-edition pin featuring the art of H.R. Giger.

The area along Wacker Drive near State Street is one of Chicago’s most architecturally significant and iconic locales. Perhaps that’s why Hollywood loves to destroy it over and over again. The A.V. Club looks at some of the many movies which made a mess of the place.

Clint Eastwood directed this retelling of the tragic story of the security guard who went from being lauded as a hero to being treated as a terrorist after the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. If ever there was a cautionary tale for irresponsible journalism, it’s this.

How do you shoot an action film in a single shot, in real time? That was Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes’ (Skyfall, American Beauty) challenge for 1917, a WWI drama that takes audiences into the trenches alongside two British soldiers on a mission to save a battalion from walking into a deadly trap. In theaters 12/2019.

The Royal Ocean Film Society tips its hat to how animated films depict food in this wonderful supercut. There’s Garden of Words‘ mouth-watering kitchen scenes, Wallace and Gromit’s simple toast, Spirited Away‘s disgusting feast and more.

There’s a four-note melody which has found its way into numerous films, often at a moment when a character dies, or is in grave peril. Vox explores the origins of this ominous music, known as Dies Irae, which dates back to the 13th century.

Editor ThorC1138 managed to find scenes from 100 different films in which a character spoke a different number between 1 and 100, then cut them together into a multi-movie countdown. We were really hoping for a rocket lift-off or a big explosion at the end.

vsual. offers this series of abstract prints, each of which features a timeline of color throughout a visually notable film. Choose from horizontal line, concentric circle, or varying width line designs, and movies like 28 Days Later, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 12 Angry Men. The ones based on animated films are particularly vibrant.

Film essayist Now You See It looks back at the end of the 20th century, and how many of the movies of 1999 seemed to have a consistent theme running through many of them. He dubbed it “The Year of the Cubicle Movie,” with films like Office Space, Fight Club, and The Matrix leading up his theory.

(PG-13) Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes return to the roles that put them on the map, with this politically incorrect sequel that goes completely meta by setting its main characters on a quest to prevent the comic book movie about Bluntman and Chronic from being rebooted by greedy Hollywood producers.

(PG-13: Language) Jean wanted to try out his new basketball. Instead, he ends up taking us on a tour through his star-studded neighborhood, filled with the likes of Brick Tamland, The Dude and Superman. A silly short by Collectif HOTU.

Editor The Unusual Suspect diced up bits and pieces from 156 different movies in order to replicate the vocals from one of the greatest one-hit wonders of all time – Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega, replacing the names of his female conquests with those of various movie characters.

Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine and Chloë Sevigny lead off a fantastic cast in this drama about a couple who get pulled over by a cop on their first date, and end up being responsible for the officer’s death – but was it a criminal act or self-defense? Drops 11/27/19, just in time for Oscar season.

(Spoilers) If you’ve never seen Rango, drop what you’re doing and stream it now. It’s honestly one of our favorite animated movies ever. Film essayist Josh Keefe looks at Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp’s underappreciated western, and how its genre-bending and aesthetic imperfections helped make it so damned great.

Now You See It points out how great sound design in movies doesn’t just mean creating realistic or believable sounds. The right sound reflects or amplifies a character, the emotion behind a scene, and even the theme of the movie itself.