Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for his portrayal of a failed stand-up comedian struggling with mental illness in the 2019 film Joker , director Todd Phillips' controversial interpretation of the classic Batman villain. The honor was richly deserved. In my review , I called it a "masterful performance" that "transforms the narrative into something more than a competent-but-unremarkable tale of hard knocks driving a troubled man to violence." The film ended up topping $1 billion globally at the box office—the first R-rated movie to do so, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film ever.

Now Phoenix is reprising that role in Phillips' follow-up, Joker: Folie à Deux , costarring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. It's hard to imagine Phillips matching his earlier achievement, but Warner Bros. released the first teaser last night, and quite frankly, the film looks fantastic.

(Spoilers for the 2019 film below.)

We learned way back in 2019 that horror director Fede Alvarez ( Don't Breathe , Evil Dead ) would be tackling a new standalone film in the Alien franchise . Personally, I had mixed feelings on the heels of the disappointing Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). But the involvement of Alvarez was a hint that perhaps the franchise was returning to its stripped-down space horror roots. Now we have the first teaser for Alien: Romulus , and yep—that seems to be the case. And that's very good news for those of us who adored the original Alien (1979) and its terrifying sequel, Aliens (1986).

(Spoilers for Alien and Aliens below.)

Alien: Romulus is set between the events of Alien and Aliens . That is, after Ripley, as sole survivor of the Nostromo , destroyed the killer Xenomorph and launched herself into space in the ship's lifeboat—along with the ginger cat, Jonesy—and before she woke up after 57 years in hyper sleep and battled more Xenomorphs while protecting the young orphan, Newt. Per the official premise: "While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe."

We got the first trailer for the spinoff prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in December, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger incarnation of the character immortalized by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road . We're now just a couple months away from the film's much-anticipated release—i.e., the perfect time to drop a second trailer to keep that anticipation high.

(Spoilers for Fury Road below.)

As previously reported , we met Furiosa early on in Fury Road , working logistics for Immortan Joe (the late Hugh Keays-Byrne), who charged her with ferrying oil from Gas Town to his Citadel with the help of a small crew of War Boys and one of the war rigs—basically tractor trailer trucks souped up with armor and novel weaponry. Furiosa stole the war rig instead, taking Joe's five wives with her.

The 1994 cult classic film The Crow turns 30 this spring, so it's as good a time as any to drop the first trailer for the long-in-development reboot directed by Rupert Sanders ( Snow White and the Huntsman , Ghost in the Shell ). Bill Skarsgård takes on the starring role made famous by the late Brandon Lee.

(Spoilers for the original 1994 film below.)

Based on a 1989 limited comic series by James O'Barr, The Crow was directed by Alex Proyas. The film starred Brandon Lee as Eric Draven, a rock musician in crime-ridden Detroit. He and his fiancée, Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas), are brutally murdered on Devil's Night by a gang of thugs on the orders of a crime boss named Top Dollar (Michael Wincott). A year later, Eric is resurrected, dons black-and-white face paint, and proceeds to take his bloody revenge before returning to his grave. Alas, Lee was accidentally killed by a prop gun during the final days of shooting; the film was completed with the help of Lee's stunt double (Chad Stahelski, who launched the John Wick franchise ) and some clever special effects.

The Borderlands video game franchise is one of the bestselling of all time, racking up more than $1 billion globally in sales over all the titles in the series. So naturally, there would be a film adaptation: the forthcoming Borderlands , directed by Eli Roth ( Cabin Fever , The House with a Clock in its Walls ). Lionsgate just dropped the official trailer, and Roth has certainly captured the trademark cel-shaded look of the film—especially Cate Blanchett's fluorescent-haired outlaw.

The Borderlands games all take place on a planet called Pandora, home to many dangerous lifeforms as well as bandits and raiders—former prisoners of corporations that previously tried to colonize the planet, believing there were precious minerals to be mined. Pandora's long-extinct race, called the Eridians, also left behind numerous alien artifacts, which eventually led to the discovery that there are various mythical vaults purportedly filled with treasure and guarded by ancient monsters. Along with corporate and military interests, there are renegade Vault Hunters who seek to claim the hidden treasures for themselves.

It might feel like Borderlands the film has been in development forever. Lionsgate announced the adaptation in 2015 and initially considered Leigh Whannell ( The Invisible Man ) to direct. The script went through multiple revisions by several different writers, and Roth was hired as director in February 2020. Primary filming took place in Budapest, Hungary, in 2021, mid-pandemic, with reshoots occurring early in 2023. Tim Miller ( Terminator: Dark Fate ) directed the reshoots with Roth's blessing, since by then the latter was already working on another film (2023's Thanksgiving ). Initial first-look images were released in June 2021, although those were just black-and-white silhouettes of the cast.

Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire , directed by Adam Wingard. It's the fifth feature film in the rebooted franchise, which also includes the animated series Skull Island and Apple TV+'s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters .

(Spoilers for Godzilla vs. Kong below.)

As previously reported , Godzilla x Kong picks up sometime after its 2021 predecessor. Godzilla vs. Kong showcased not only a major showdown between its titular titans—in which Godzilla emerged the victor—but also the two teaming up in the climactic finale to take out Mechagodzilla, a telepathically controlled creature with the severed head of Ghidorah. Ghidorah's consciousness took over when Mechagodzilla was activated, and it took both Kong and Godzilla (plus some timely help from humans) to defeat him. (Kong got the final honors, although Godzilla charged the killing ax—made from one of his dorsal plates—with his atomic breath.)

Like so many others, I adored the 1996 film Twister, now a classic in the "disaster porn" genre and still in frequent weekend and holiday rotation on broadcast and cable networks nearly 30 years later. We're finally getting a follow-up with Twisters , directed by Lee Isaac Chung ( Minari ). Universal Pictures dropped the official trailer during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

(Some spoilers for the original film below.)

Twister rocked the 1996 box office, racking up $495 million worldwide and snagging an Oscar nomination for special effects. Critics' reactions were more mixed. The film earned well-deserved  praise for its special effects and sheer entertainment value.  Who can forget the flying cows, the jaw-dropping CGI twisters, and that classic scene when a tornado suddenly rips through a drive-in movie screen right in the middle of The Shining ? But others criticized the thin character development and dismissed the film as "loud," "dumb," and "a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actor's craft."

After some rather lackluster performances at the box office over the last year or so, Marvel Studios has scaled back its MCU offerings for 2024. We're getting just one: Deadpool and Wolverine . Maybe one is all we need. Marvel released a two-minute teaser during yesterday's Super Bowl. And if this is the future of the MCU, count us in. The teaser has already racked up more than 12 million views on YouTube, and deservedly so. It has the cheeky irreverence that made audiences embrace Ryan Reynold's R-rated superhero in the first place, plus a glimpse of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine—or rather, his distinctive shadow. And yes, Marvel is retaining that R rating—a big step given that all the prior MCU films have been resoundingly PG-13.

(Some spoilers for the first two films below.)

Reynolds famously made his first foray into big-screen superhero movies in 2011's The Green Lantern , which was a box office disappointment and not especially good. But he found the perfect fit with 2016's Deadpool , starring as Wade Wilson, a former Canadian special forces operative (dishonorably discharged) who develops regenerative healing powers that heal his cancer but leave him permanently disfigured with scars all over his body. Wade decides to become a masked vigilante, turning down an invitation to join the X-Men and abandon his bad-boy ways.

The 2018 post-apocalyptic horror film A Quiet Place deservedly won critical raves and an Oscar for sound editing. Sound, and often the absence thereof, was used to build suspense and create extremely effective jump scares. The 2021 sequel followed the same basic rules. So it's a bit jarring that the official trailer for the new spinoff film, A Quiet Place: Day One , is rife with the sounds of New York City streets. It's written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who co-wrote the original film with John Krasinski.

(Spoilers below for the first two films.)

As I've written previously , A Quiet Place had a simple premise: in early 2020, sightless extraterrestrial creatures wiped out most of the humans and animals on Earth. They hunt by sound thanks to their hypersensitive hearing and are difficult to kill because they sport tough armored skin. The film centered on the Abbott family, struggling to survive a few months after the initial invasion. Dad Lee (John Krasinski) was an engineer focused on keeping his family alive each day. Wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) was a doctor, pregnant with their fourth child.