Note: This is a re-post of our Vivarium review from the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival. The film is now available on demand and on Digital HD. Sometimes, nature is a bitch. It's not evil, it just is -- you can't call a lion an asshole for eating that gazelle and a parasite isn't exacting some cruel vengeance against its host, but the predator's lack of moral culpability doesn't make the food chain any less painful for the prey. Lorcan Finnegan's sophomore feature Vivarium is all about the ravages of life cycles, natural and …

Forty years ago this fall, the late Carl Sagan began his journey towards becoming a worldwide pop culture icon and champion of science communication thanks to the PBS series Cosmos. Now, though Sagan is gone, his legacy lives on through the work of Ann Druyan, who continues to strive for science education through the series that she, her husband Carl, and Cosmos co-creator Steven Soter started decades ago. That legacy was furthered in the 2014 series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which featured astrophysicist / contemporary science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson as the host, and continues still today with the series' …

If you want to get an audience's attention, you can do a lot worse than beginning with an extreme close-up on Richard E. Grant’s impossibly communicative face. With his bright blue eyes beaming against a burnt orange background, locked directly into camera – and thus, staring directly into your soul, the shot holds too still for just a few moments too long while Grant subtly shifts and seems to breathe you in through the screen. It’s an instant shortcut to unnerving the viewer and introduces them to the intimate, curious, and decidedly offbeat world of Dispatches from …

Netflix has released the official trailer for End Times Fun, the new comedy special from Marc Maron. Maron has long been a fave with Netflix, starring on the '80s wrestling series GLOW and putting up the 2013 special Thinky Pain at the streaming giant. It looks like Maron, once again, wants to help us all laugh in the face of soul-crushing existential dread. The albeit brief trailer begins with Maron joking, "The reason we're not more upset about the world ending environmentally, I think, is because all of us in our hearts really that know we did everything …

As a writer and filmmaker, Alex Garland has become known for pensive, mind-bending sci-fi movies rooted in just enough real-world science to leave you hanging on the ledge of a full-blown existential crisis. The 28 Days Later and Dredd screenwriter made his directorial debut with the stunning A.I. drama Ex Machina and his last film, 2018’s Annihilation, was his boldest swing yet; an ambitious, abstract and absolutely mind-melting biological nightmare. With Devs, the upcoming series that will launch Disney’s new FX on Hulu model, Garland makes the leap into television with another …

Be aware there are spoilers for The Wave below. Justin Long takes a hallucinogenic trip down an existential rabbit hole in The Wave, the new psychedelic thriller from filmmaker Gille Klabin. Long stars as an insurance lawyer, Frank, who's a little too good at a very bad karma gig. Celebrating a new promotion, Frank heads out for a night on the town with his co-worker Jeff (Donald Faison) and winds up caught in a surprisingly wild and increasingly bizarre night when he meets a girl (Shiela Vand), does some drugs, and winds up skipping through time in a …

Birdman is a rare beast, an art-house movie that hit the mainstream. These behind-the-scenes secrets tell you more about the Oscar-winning film.

The Kominsky Method: Season 2 is almost here, and ready to make your worst fears of aging ungracefully a reality. Following a first season that dealt with prostate problems and the complicated parenting of adult children, Sandy (Michael Douglas) and Norman (Alan Arkin) are back for more. The Netflix series won Golden Globes this year for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy, and Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy (Douglas). This season, the Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory) created comedy appears to be delving into… older problems. Like polio and funerals! [caption id="…

Sometimes, nature is a bitch. It's not evil, it just is -- you can't call a lion an asshole for eating that gazelle and a parasite isn't exacting some cruel vengeance against its host, but the predator's lack of moral culpability doesn't make the food chain any less painful for the prey. Lorcan Finnegan's sophomore feature Vivarium is all about the ravages of life cycles, natural and man-made, from the intimate perspective of a couple experiencing the peaks and valleys of the 21st Century human life cycle in fast-forward, while literally trapped in …