Awesome Movies

Joe Dante’s 1984 Gremlins is a classic popcorn flick, packed with offbeat humor, gross-out gags, memorable monsters, and its share of charming moments. But In Praise of Shadows thinks it’s much more, establishing a whole new direction for how little creatures have been treated in horror and fantasy films ever since.

Sandgrain Studio creates minimal posters inspired by classic motion pictures and TV shows. Using a clean and contained color palette of muted greens and oranges, they bring a quiet sophistication to everything from Robocop to The Big Lebowski to Back to the Future. They also make Star Wars, Avengers, and Lord of the Rings sets.

Movies and TV shows use a mix of practical, optical, and digital visual effects to simulate natural disasters. Insider compiled behind-the-scenes footage from eight movies where VFX pros brought storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other acts of Mother Nature’s fury to life.

Béla Films’ montage starts out with a seemingly random array of classic movie and TV moments, but transitions around the 1-minute mark into a thrilling action sequence, painstakingly edited together in time with the music. We love how seamlessly the edit moves from car chase to foot chase to fist fight.

Drug usage is frequently depicted in movies and TV shows, but actors obviously aren’t really snorting coke or shooting up heroin. Insider spent some time with prop master Joel Barkow to learn about the creative techniques involved in making realistic-looking fake drugs that are safe for actors to handle and even ingest.

If Valdimar Jóhannsson’s movie Lamb lives up to its intense trailer, it looks like it’s gonna be one wild ride. It follows the story of a childless couple in Iceland who adopt a newborn lamb on their farm, but after they start treating the animal as a member of the family, it may just end up ripping them apart.

Joe Johnston has directed hits including Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, and Captain America: The First Avenger. In 1991, he shot The Rocketeer, a retro superhero flick. The Royal Ocean Film Society looks back at the lighthearted adventure, celebrates Johnston’s achievements, and the commonalities in his movies.

Filmmaker and editor Fabrice Mathieu created this brilliant and artful short film as a tribute to the cinema. Each vignette is entirely composed of looped GIFs, arranged together for their similarities in story, mood, composition, scenery, or other connections.

A fantasy retelling of the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s rebellious nephew, and his quest to defeat the Green Knight. Dev Patel portrays the young knight, who tangles with ghosts, giants, grifters, and other baddies on his mission to prove himself and end the Green Knight’s reign of terror. In theaters 7.30.2021.

Mike Matola creates amazing works of art by writing down the scripts from movies and lyrics from songs, carefully spacing the words and characters in such a way to create portraits. His shop includes prints inspired by The Princess Bride, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more. Time-lapse video by Cory Garcia.

Before turning his life around, Cain Vincent Dyer used to rob banks. In fact, he robbed over 100 of them in two years. Now, Cain is a motivational speaker and life coach. In this video from Insider, he watches 11 bank heist scenes from movies, and breaks down how realistic or likely they each are.

There are lots of movie scenes that incorporate mirrors or other reflective surfaces, yet we can’t see the camera or the crew in them. Just how does this movie magic work? Film essayist Paul E.T. digs into some of the tricks that filmmakers use to keep equipment and people hidden from shots.

(PG-13) Writer/director James Gunn takes a moment away from his Guardians of the Galaxy gang to assemble another crew of misfits, only this time they’re the deranged members of DC’s Suicide Squad, a shady collection of baddies who will self-destruct if they misbehave while on missions. In theaters and on HBO Max 8.6.2021.

Writer/director Zack Snyder is behind this movie about a group of mercenaries (led by Dave Bautista) who venture to the Las Vegas Strip to pull off a massive heist. The big problem: it’s the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Oceans Eleven meets Dawn of the Dead hits Netflix on 5.21.2021.

We just looked it up on IMDb, and The Simpsons has been on the air for more than 31 years. Along the way, they’ve had their ups and downs, and in 2007, even had their own feature film. Screen Junkies offers their cynical take on the movie, which is now almost old enough to drive. Also, we are so down for Spider-Pig 3.

Napoleon Dynamite is one of our favorite movies of all time. But if you take its quirky characters out of context and combine their actions with the appropriate music, this cult classic comedy quickly becomes a freaky horror flick. Tobias Conrad performed the editorial surgery needed to give us just that movie.