Steve Carell

Can someone explain to me why Gru, a man with no neck, wears a scarf? Is it a fashion statement? Do supervillains even care about fashion? I don’t get it.

Following the career of Richard Linklater can give you the best kind of creative whiplash. He went from the aging romance of Before Midnight to the coming-of-age epic Boyhood, to the college bro comedy Everybody Wants Some!! Linklater’s next movie sounds like yet another departure, another major shift in subject and tone, back to more serious material. It’s called Last Flag Flying, and it was announced today it will premiere as the Opening Night Film of the 2017 New York Film Festival.

It’s not guaranteed, but there’s a legitimate chance that when all is said and done that Despicable Me 3 reigns supreme as the top-grossing movie of the 2017 summer box office. The previous sequels, plus the Minions spinoff, have grossed more than $2.6 billion worldwide, and each of the last two made well over $300 million in the United States alone. Despicable Me 3 looks like it will offer plenty of what fans of the series crave: Those goofy gibberish-spouting Minions, wacky misadventures, and plenty of Steve Carell’s lovably evil Gru, plus now he’s got a twin brother (or, as he calls him, “a tween broothur”) to contend with as well.

“Tennis drama” sounds like one big snooze of a subgenre, but before you close this tab, hear me out – Battle of the Sexes ain’t just any tennis drama. The Emma Stone-Steve Carell film recounts the famous titular match where Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs on national television in 1973. And it was far more entertaining than your average round of tennis.

Adam McKay’s establishing a reputation as Hollywood’s foremost chronicler of the biggest hot-button issues... of ten years ago. He made blackly satirical mince meat of the subprime lending crisis with The Big Short, stepping back into our recent past to expose the avarice still at play in the world of macroeconomics today. And for his next project, he’s going to take aim at a West Wing political player loathed and feared by liberals as a power-mad despot intent on destroying America. No, not him, we’re referring to a different wannabe fascist with the public graces of Darth Vader. To be specific, Dick Cheney.

Trapped inside by today’s massive snowstorm? There’s a silver lining: Now you have time to watch the new Despicable Me 3 trailer 8,000 times.

A handful of Super Bowl ads have already landed online ahead of this Sunday’s big game — it’s the usual mix of TV spots for upcoming movies like Ghost in the Shell and Transformers: The Last Knight, along with a few ads featuring familiar faces like Gal Gadot and John Malkovich promoting businesses and collecting paychecks. And then there’s Honda. Like others, their ad for this year’s Super Bowl also features several beloved celebs, but there’s something kind of unnerving about the execution.

The Golden Globes have a reputation as a kind of edgy awards ceremony. (Well, edgy by the standards of awards shows anyway.) But this year’s host, Jimmy Fallon, is about as edgy as sphere, and his monologue lacked the bite of other previous hosts like Ricky Gervais. The only really funny moment of the night came during one of the awards presentations, when Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig took the stage to give out the Golden Globes for Best Animated Feature.

Finally, the Despicable Me trilogy will be concluded. Until Despicable Me 4. Which I’m sure we’ll see soon enough; the first two Despicables plus the spinoff Minions earned more than $2.6 billion worldwide. People just love despicable cartoons, and also sentient Twinkees that talk in gibberish. That’s just the way it goes.

Minecraft, an open-space computer game in which players can build and create anything their heart can desire, has amassed a gigantic following among youngsters who use their imaginations to give birth to expansive worlds. Universally beloved among the world’s middle-schoolers, the game has spawned every merchandising tie-in under the sun, from pixelated foam swords to T-shirts with snappy slogans to lunch boxes. And now, the youth phenomenon will permeate the mainstream even further through a feature film adaptation. The project was announced in 2014, they landed a director in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney in 2015, and this year, they’ve made moves to lock down their first star.