we are in a cage
Articles by David Sims
10 of the Year’s Best Horror Movies Original
Sign up for Video Village, a new weekly newsletter in which David Sims unearths cinematic gems and brings readers into his movie obsession. Horror has been a particularly vital playground in the movie world of late. As studios make fewer and fewer mid-budget dramas and comedies, major names such as Jordan Peele and Ari Aster have made inroads via low-budget horror.
Clayface Struggles to Justify Itself Original
Sign up for Video Village, a new weekly newsletter in which David Sims unearths cinematic gems and brings readers into his movie obsession. When James Gunn was named a co-head of DC Studios in 2022, along with his producing partner Peter Safran, he was essentially being tasked with building a plane in midair. His remit from Warner Bros.
A Masterful Odyssey Into the Mind of Elizabeth Holmes
When he was in charge of Apple, Steve Jobs was notorious for projecting a “reality distortion field.” That was the jokey way his employees described Jobs’s mix of charisma and bravado and his demanding management style—which would lead people to accept seemingly impossible deadlines, or to promise that they could fix unfixable problems. A malfunctioning version of the same phenomenon once surrounded Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the failed medical start-up Theranos.
A Bold Era in Hollywood Ends With a Whimper
Sign up for Video Village, a new weekly newsletter in which David Sims unearths cinematic gems and brings readers into his movie obsession. To kick off this newsletter, I sent out a message declaring that movies were “undeniably back.” Within days, it seemed that the sky was falling again. Two venerable studios, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, officially merged on October 6, further consolidating power in Hollywood into just a few conglomerates.
10 Movies That Define the 2020s
This is an edition of Video Village, David Sims’s newsletter that unearths cinematic gems and brings readers into his movie obsession. Sign up for it here. Welcome to Video Village, a new space for The Atlantic’s film-loving readers. For this, my first edition, my editors challenged me to lay out my perspective on my own taste, so I’ve worked up a list of movies that I think define this strange decade thus far.
The Social Reckoning Is a Zombie of a Movie
The Social Network was powered by alienation. David Fincher’s incredible 2010 film, written by Aaron Sorkin, tells the story of an internet age. It does this through the fraught relationship between two frustrated college students, hungry for popularity and connection, one of whom just happens to be Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a haunted movie that did an outstanding job predicting the nightmares that awaited us in our lives online.
Welcome to Video Village
Sign up for Video Village, a new weekly newsletter in which David Sims unearths cinematic gems and brings readers into his movie obsession. Perhaps you’ve heard the news: Movies are back. For many of us (including quite a few of you, I imagine), they never went away, but 2026 has been a year of guarded optimism in Hollywood. Ticket sales are up, the box office is booming, and, most heartening of all, superhero movies aren’t propping up the industry largely by themselves.
A Fascinating Change of Pace for Tom Cruise
Digger Rockwell could be the role of a lifetime. To become the eponymous lead character of the director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new movie, Tom Cruise dons a paunchy bodysuit and is caked in old-man makeup. He dresses in gaudy attire, sporting a cowboy hat, a bolo tie, and occasionally a giant prop shovel that his character waves around ceremoniously. His look harkens back to the days of Digger’s tycoon ancestors, who plumbed the earth for the oil that made him the richest man alive.
The Right Way to Adapt a Video Game
Listen1.0x 0:008:58 The moment I knew Resident Evil had me was the ammo check. The protagonist of the director Zach Cregger’s new film is a civilian, a medical courier named Bryan (played by Austin Abrams) who’s been tasked with driving a special package over to nearby Raccoon City in the snow.
A Big Swing Is Not Always Enough
The marketing for Hope, the new film by the South Korean horror master Na Hong-jin, presents it on an epic, otherworldly scale. It’s the most expensive Korean movie ever made, and the director’s first in more than 10 years, since his widely acclaimed hit, The Wailing; its sweeping rollout across the United States, which includes special showings on premium-format screens, is also one rarely afforded to international productions.
Hollywood’s Franchise Obsession Has Come for Indie Movies
Onslaught, in theaters this week, should be the perfect early-September treat. The aggressive action thriller is gory, loud, and packed with interesting actors, and it has a straightforward premise: Three murderous super-soldiers, the result of some shadowy extra-governmental experiment, have escaped from a lab and are descending upon a small town in New Mexico.
The Strange Case of a Nearly Doomed Looney Tunes Movie
Perhaps the starkest sign that Coyote vs. Acme isn’t your typical children’s movie is that it’s based on a New Yorker article. Yes, it features many Looney Tunes characters that multiple generations know and love, interacting alongside real-life actors in a style similar to prior big-screen efforts, such as Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
The Terror of Aimlessness
If there’s one thing young moviegoers seem to fear these days, it’s the idea of the in-between. The term liminal horror has gone from niche internet speak to Hollywood trend, thanks to the acclaimed TV show Severance and the recent smash-hit movie Backrooms.
Hollywood’s Most Indestructible Superhero
This has been a terrific year for movie theaters. Cinemas are on course for their best financial year since before the coronavirus pandemic, powered by large-scale hits such as The Odyssey and surprise small-budget smashes, particularly Obsession and Backrooms. Fears about the decline of the big-screen experience amid the rise of at-home streaming seem to have begun dissipating.
Pop Culture Has Its Teeth in You Original
In their fledgling but fascinating career thus far, the director Jane Schoenbrun has been consumed by the pop culture that consumes us. They’ve already proved to be an urgent voice on the matter: Their first feature, the low-budget We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, focused on the allure of online “creepypastas” and weird YouTube rabbit holes that despondent teenagers might go down.
Tony, Before He Was Bourdain
Tony follows a very familiar sort of 19-year-old menace—the kind of character coming-of-age movies like this were made for. He’s someone you might have crushed on in college: He sulks around with worldly paperbacks stuffed into his rear pockets, dresses in leather jackets even if it’s unseasonably warm, and seems to wear a permanent glower. Yet Tony, as played by Dominic Sessa, is more than just a pretentious bad boy; he’s starting to work his way toward something meaningful.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” Is Trapped in Marvel’s Web Original
The subtitle of the newest Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day, implies a grand reset. Yes, this is the fourth Spider-Man installment starring Tom Holland as the spindly hero, not including the other Marvel projects he’s popped in for. This sequel, however, purports to bring the character back to basics, offering a street-level adventure after far too many big crossovers.
The Fear of Missing The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan shouldn’t have many personal box-office records left to break. He’s had a long career involving a slew of hits, critical and commercial, including Oscar wins, a viral theatergoing campaign, and a wildly successful Batman trilogy.
An Odyssey Deserving of the Biggest Screen Possible Original
Emily Wilson’s celebrated translation of Homer’s The Odyssey sets aside the classic description of the epic poem’s hero, Odysseus, as a “man of twists and turns.” Instead, she goes for something more introspective: “Tell me about a complicated man,” it begins. That tweak perfectly reflects Christopher Nolan’s approach with The Odyssey, which is somehow Hollywood’s first proper adaptation of one of human history’s most enduring stories.
The Superhero Movie That Crashes and Burns
The success of last year’s Superman film proved there was still some interest in comic-book movies, all these years into their Hollywood-blockbuster dominance. The director James Gunn reintroduced viewers to the aw-shucks costumed champion, this time trying to make a name in a cynical, contemporary landscape, and Gunn’s approach made the classic superhero ideals of truth and justice feel fresh instead of corny.
A Modern-Day Playtime Nightmare Original
Pixar’s cruelest and cleverest trick has been successfully convincing audiences, over several decades, that all kinds of creatures—even inanimate objects—can have rich inner lives. In Cars, vehicles talk and run a whole society; in Finding Nemo, fish feel imprisoned when they’re placed in a tank; Inside Out posits, through the use of anthropomorphized memories, that to be forgotten is a fate as bad as death.
A Robin Hood You May Not Want to Root for
What if you took a folk figure or a popular comic-book character—someone beloved enough to be the star of, say, a Disney cartoon—and made a film that cast them in a dark, even antiheroic light? Call it the “grim and gritty” take, or perhaps the “untold true story”; it’s the kind of reimagining that has befallen several storybook figures on-screen, such as Peter Pan and Hansel and Gretel.
Spielberg Hasn’t Abandoned Hope for Humanity
Steven Spielberg is sometimes unfairly tagged as the ultimate Boomer, repeatedly harkening back to the entertainment that spellbound him in his youth. And there was a time, far earlier in his career, when that label stuck better—when Indiana Jones, friendly aliens, mean dinosaurs, and Peter Pan himself dominated the director’s filmography.
An Alien Movie for a Post-Truth Moment
11 hours ago A little fender bender can’t stop a starlet on the rise. The chaos of a global press tour is often hidden behind beautifully lit photos on red carpets and glamorous runway looks, but the reality is that moving across the world comes with its own challenges. Case in point: Priyanka Kedia, who has a …
Comedy’s Biggest Stand-Up Won’t Be Hollywood’s Next Leading Man
The comedian Nate Bargatze is an indisputably titanic name in his field. He’s been the top-grossing stand-up in America for two years in a row, he hosted last year’s Emmys (albeit to mixed reviews), and he’s even planning on opening a theme park called Nateland in his hometown of Nashville.
How to Make the End of World War II Feel Like a Surprise
The World War II drama has been a hearty staple of the film industry’s diet for more than 80 years—even as Hollywood has turned away from the kind of meat-and-potatoes offering that the genre represents. And after so many decades, directors somehow still keep finding new narrative nooks and crannies to explore.
How to Make the End of World War II Feel Like a Surprise
2 hours ago From live music to audiobooks, podcasts, and even radio shows, this on-demand audio treasure trove is one of the internet’s best-kept secrets. These days, music is everywhere. You can call up practically any recorded song at any moment with a quick flick of your favorite fingie and nary an extra …
The 20-Year-Old Director Who Found Hell in Empty Hallways
In 2019, a mysterious post took off on 4chan, that ever-churning morass of anonymous commentary and internet peculiarities.
The Goodbye Stephen Colbert Wanted to Say
The end of a long-running late-night talk show tends to play out in one of two ways: as a mournful funeral, or a joyous wake. In the case of hosts such as David Letterman and Johnny Carson, who picked the date and manner of their retirements, the send-offs were upbeat. Stephen Colbert, Letterman’s successor as the host of CBS’s The Late Show for the last 11 years, is leaving his job under more forced, awkward circumstances.
Jude Law Shouldn’t Be This Good as Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin does not appear for the first 45 minutes of The Wizard of the Kremlin, an odd choice for a satirical film entirely about him. His presence looms in the background—the future Russian premier is jokingly referred to as “the Tsar” by the narrators—yet the director, Olivier Assayas, seems more interested in explaining the strange country Putin inherited, at least initially.
A Star Wars Movie to Fall Asleep To
What if I told you that a new Star Wars movie is in theaters this week? One directed by Jon Favreau, the steady hand at the tiller who helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and the current stretch of Disney live-action remakes with The Jungle Book?
The Most Surprising Part of Stephen Colbert’s Late-Night Run
Listen1.0x 0:007:27 This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. When a celebrity stops by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, they aren’t there to lip-synch to a pop song.
Miranda Priestley Hangs Up Her Own Coat Now
The Devil Wears Prada took place amid the glorious roar of capitalism. The hit 2006 comedy took place in a world where magazines were still triumphant, with Runway, a fictional, Vogue-esque publication the film was centered on, sitting firmly atop the heap.
Even Hollywood’s Funniest People Have to Compromise
The best way to sneak a comedy into theaters these days, it seems, is to make it a crime drama. Over Your Dead Body is billed as the latest effort from the director Jorma Taccone—a surprising name to be attached, considering his filmography. His previous features are Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and MacGruber, two of the better comedies released in the 2010s (back when such things still regularly appeared in cinemas).
A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom
Mother Mary begins with a straightforward problem: The titular character, a pop star played by Anne Hathaway, is looking for a showstopper of a dress. But the complications quickly stack up. Mary needs it made over the weekend; she needs it to serve as the centerpiece of her career relaunch after a long and mysterious absence from the public eye; most crucially, she needs it designed by her former collaborator Sam Anselm (played by Michaela Coel), from whom she’s been estranged for years.
The Pitt Brings the Crisis Home
This article contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of The Pitt. The first season of The Pitt presented an emergency room brought to the absolute limits of its capabilities, unfolding as 15 hours of real-time drama at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center that culminated in a deluge of patients after a mass shooting. It was exceptional stuff, a throwback to classic medical TV dramas with just enough of a modern, high-octane twist, and was laden with awards.
The Real Heist in Steven Soderbergh’s New Movie
Julian Sklar spends most of his workday performing on camera. Not for anyone important; the cantankerous artist (played by Ian McKellen), the protagonist of Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, The Christophers, is recording jokey Cameos for eager fans. Facing a ring-lit iPhone, he rambles about his fading career with chipper bumptiousness.
Do You Ever Really Know Who You’re Marrying? Original
The drama of The Drama isn’t a total secret—if you’re looking to spoil the button-pushing premise for yourself, a quick Google search will do the trick. But the writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s new film hinges on the viewer’s reaction to one character’s shocking revelation. The film doesn’t linger on its provocation, however; instead it sits with the moment’s ramifications in ways both darkly funny and sneakily challenging.
Working a Fake Job Is a Great Pastime
It probably won’t shock you to learn that the best-selling game of 2026 thus far is not about the mundane activity of running a video store. Yet for me, it might as well be: Retro Rewind, an indie exercise in retail management, has captured my attention as much as the real global chart-topper, Resident Evil Requiem. That latest entry in the smash-hit horror franchise is exceptionally sleek, with gory action and a discomfiting atmosphere.
The Tacit Politics of Pixar’s Latest Hit
My daughter is now of the age where she will go see any new animated film in a theater, which means that again and again, I encounter a very specific utopian vision from the world of children’s entertainment: Wouldn’t it be nice if all the animals lived together in harmony? The theme is certainly a knock-on effect from Zootopia, the 2016 smash hit whose sequel was the highest-grossing American film of 2025.
Who Says You Can’t Have Fun During the Apocalypse?
Here’s how you know Project Hail Mary is a work of science fiction: It’s about the disparate nations of Earth pooling together their resources and intelligence to confront an apocalyptic problem—in this case, the pending death of the sun, due to a mysterious alien substance.
What Are the Oscars for, if Not This?
The narrative of this year’s Oscars was: how to pick? Between Sinners and One Battle After Another, voters put two majorly successful, critically beloved, star-driven studio releases at the top of the nominations pile. While One Battle After Another had seemed like the odds-on Best Picture favorite for months, Sinners was collecting enough trophies, and getting so much love at precursor ceremonies, that it felt impossible to fully count out.
Who Will (and Should) Win the Oscars This Year
The run-up to the Academy Awards is a fun, ridiculous, and loopy monthslong stretch. It also encourages something vital to Hollywood’s artistic ecosystem: Movie studios, in the hopes of achieving Oscar glory, put money toward more stylistically challenging projects, rather than consistently aiming for the broadest common box-office denominator.
The Movie Star Hiding in Plain Sight
Look at a list of the highest-grossing actors of all time, and you’ll see a lot of familiar names. The group includes franchise-hopping performers such as Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Zoe Saldaña; legacy A-listers such as Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks; and one 74-year-old Swede who has built a bustling, storied career doing a little bit of everything.
The Household Names Hollywood Has Been Seeking
Hollywood has been fretting over the death of the movie star for nearly a decade now, and the fear is not unfounded: The golden era when the likes of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Denzel Washington could coax audiences to the cinema with sheer name recognition seems to be passing into memory without enough proper successors to take their places. For a while, franchise sequels, which produced a whole new group of leading men and women, appeared set to replace the classic star vehicle.
‘The Bride!’ Is a Failed Experiment
Monster movies come in strange bunches. Vampires dominated the screen in the 2010s, as gritty zombie hordes had the decade before that. Lately, we’re awash in Frankensteins, each adding stylized flavor to Mary Shelley’s novel: Zelda Williams’s goofy high-school version, Lisa Frankenstein; Yorgos Lanthimos’s steampunk reimagining, Poor Things; and Guillermo Del Toro’s faithful-to-a-fault take, currently up for nine Oscars.
‘The Bride!’ Is a Failed Experiment
6 hours ago An erupting volcano in Indonesia led to lousy weather in Europe. Trapped indoors, Mary Shelley began to write ‘Frankenstein.’ Maria Popova knows what makes a person. A few hundred pages into “Traversal,” her kaleidoscopic, astounding and often maddening exploration of the evanescence of life and …
This Season, All-American Sportswear Goes a Little Bit Country
Mathilda Gvarliani wears a Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello jacket, shirt, and skirt; Jessie Western jewelry (throughout); stylist’s own sheriff pin. Gvarliani wears a Polo Ralph Lauren top and socks; stylist’s own swimsuit. Gvarliani wears a Versace vest, shirt, pants, and belt. Gvarliani wears a Miu Miu jacket and apron; stylist’s own bandanna. Gvarliani wears a Isabel Marant shirt; Levi’s jeans; Jessie Western hat and boots. Gvarliani wears a Hermès vest and pants; Jessie Western boots.
Netflix Just Avoided an $80 Million Headache
When the news broke yesterday that Netflix had dropped out of the monthslong bidding war to control Warner Bros. Discovery—including its massive film library, range of TV networks, and news empire—the streamer’s stock immediately jumped. It was a curious market reaction, but one that seemed to reflect the deep mistrust that Netflix’s investors, and much of the media industry at large, had about the proposed deal.
Robert Duvall Was a Different Kind of Leading Man
Robert Duvall didn’t speak a word in his first film performance. When he was cast as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, he was but an up-and-coming theater actor, and his role as the silent, mysterious neighbor to the heroine Scout Finch was small but pivotal.
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