After making its debut in Japan last year, the Pokémon franchise’s 23rd animated movie is making its way to Netflix. Outside of Japan, China and Korea, Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle will debut globally on the streaming platform on October 8th. The premiere will mark the film’s international debut.

The film is essentially Pokémon’s take on the tale of Tarzan. When Ash and Pikachu go to explore the forest of Okoya, they discover a boy named Koko. Thanks to an upbringing at the hands of a Pokémon named Dada Zarude, Koko believes he too is a Pokémon. Ash and Pikachu’s arrival in his forest home leads him to question everything he thought was true about his existence.

Ahead of the movie’s release, you can add Dada Zarude and a shiny Celebi to your Pokémon Sword and Shield roster by signing up for the Trainer’s Club newsletter by September 25th. The Pokémon Company, Niantic and Netflix also plan a special Pokémon Go event tied to the film’s release. They promised to share more information on that front soon. 

Netflix and WWE have been working together for quite a while, and their next project is a little spookier than usual. Escape the Undertaker is an interactive horror movie that's coming to Netflix on October 5th — just in time for Halloween.

The flick stars the legendary Undertaker, along with Big E, Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston, who comprise The New Day, one of WWE's most popular acts of the last decade. The film sees the trio visit The Undertaker's mansion, which turns out to be "an extreme haunted house, packed to the brim with supernatural challenges," according to Bloody Disgusting. You'll decide the fate of The New Day as the group tries to "survive the wrath of The Undertaker."

Other WWE-related fictional projects have landed on Netflix over the last few years, including a sitcom called The Big Show Show and The Main Event, a movie in which a kid becomes a wrestler after finding a magical mask. The latest offering will add to Netflix's growing library of interactive content, which includes the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt finale, a Carmen Sandiego special, a mindfulness experience and, more recently, video games.

WWE actually has a long history of making horror movies through its WWE Studios arm, including an ill-fated reboot of the Leprechaun series. It has had a hand in some fine horror flicks, such as Oculus and Mohawk, so Escape the Undertaker could turn out to be pretty solid. Just try to keep The New Day out of The Undertaker's boiler room.

Ahead of September 9th, when it plans to share the first full trailer from The Matrix Resurrections, Warner Bros. has launched a teaser for the upcoming film. The website, whatisthematrix.com, offers a first look at Neo's latest adventure. 

In a call back to the first film, you'll see a red and blue pill on the screen when you first visit the website. Choose the former and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will narrate the clip that follows, while the latter will treat you to the voice of Neil Patrick Harris. Each will present a different interpretation of what follows and a different series of cuts from the movie. 

What's more, each time you refresh the website and watch the clips again, you'll see a different set of scenes from the movie, as well as a mention of the current time — you know, to break the fourth wall. There aren't an infinite number of variations of each teaser, but you can piece together quite a few different scenes together if you watch each one multiple times.  

Either way, it's a fun way to build up excitement for the film before the first official trailer drops later this week. Of course, if you want to go into The Matrix Resurrections blind, then it's best to wait until December to see it on your own terms. 

How do you build on a filmography that includes disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day? If you’re Roland Emmerich, the answer is, quite simply, to drop the Moon on the planet. In the first trailer for his latest film, Moonfall, Earth’s natural satellite has decided to do humanity a solid favor and put it out of its misery by crashing into its anchor.

You might think its title says almost everything you need to know about Moonfall, but, sorry, the end of the world is only part of the story here. According to the film’s official synopsis, a “mysterious force” is what sets the Moon on its collision course with Earth. It’s up to a NASA executive, former astronaut and conspiracy theorist — played by Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley, respectively — to save the world. “These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is,” the film’s official summary says.

I’ll say it now. I hope it’s not aliens that are behind everything. Either way, Moonfall looks like it will be a fun and trashy way to spend an hour or two forgetting about all the real problems haunting humans at the moment. The film will debut in theaters on February 4th, 2022. We can't wait.

Netflix has announced its first-ever global fan event, TUDUM (say it out loud, it's fun). It's named after the sound that plays alongside the Netflix logo whenever you start watching something on the service. The company says TUDUM will be a three-hour event full of news, trailers and exclusive clips from more than 70 series, movies and specials, with appearances from some of Netflix's biggest stars.

The goal of TUDUM is "to entertain and honor Netflix fans from across the globe" and surely create some buzz around many of these shows and movies. Among the projects that Netflix will showcase are Stranger Things, The Witcher, Cobra Kai, Money Heist, Bridgerton, The Crown, Ozark, The Umbrella Academy and Red Notice (a blockbuster heist film starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds). Cowboy Bebop is also on the docket, so perhaps Netflix will show the first trailer from the upcoming series during the event.

TUDUM starts at noon ET on September 25th. It will stream live on Netflix's various YouTube channels as well as on Twitch and Twitter. There are pre-shows before the main showcase as well, starting at 8am ET. Those will center around anime and a selection of shows and films from South Korea and India. Netflix says Facebook, Twitch and YouTube users can co-stream the event — in other words, rebroadcast TUDUM on their own channels in real-time and react to it live.

Movies Anywhere, the streaming hub that pulls together films you purchase for a variety of digital stores, has added a feature many users have long been hoping for: lists. Not only will this help you better organize your library, the system will automatically generate personalized lists based on the movies you own. You should now see a My Lists tab next to My Movies.

Organizing a Movies Anywhere library presents a different challenge to grouping titles together on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. While subscribers of those services have access to the same content based on the country they're in, every Movies Anywhere user has a unique selection of films in their locker.

Movies Anywhere is looking to avoid having the same movie in too many lists. As such, movies are typically funneled into categories to which they're most closely matched.

One key part of the My Lists feature is that it takes into account viewing behavior. During a demo last week, Movies Anywhere didn’t go into too much detail about how this works. However, if you watch a few minutes of any film, the algorithm, artificial intelligence and machine learning systems will consider what you're interested in watching when they organize your lists.

Movies Anywhere’s content team classifies the films and there are around 2,000 different potential categories as things stand. These are centered around things like genres, franchises, people (say, actors, directors or composers) and themes. So, if you have a lot of movies about robots or cyborgs in your library, they might be grouped together in a list. Same thing goes for a collection of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Other lists might focus on movies focused on antiheroes or musicians. The system might generate a list of nostalgic flicks, or classify films into subgenres.

Lists that Movies Anywhere creates for you are marked as "automatic lists." You can also create and modify lists. You'll be able to add and remove films, reorganize lists and rename them. If you own all the Star Wars movies, for instance, you can place them in release order, sort them in the canonical timeline or even arrange them in the so-called Machete order. It’s up to you.

One thing you can't do right now is modify any lists on the Movies Anywhere smart TV app. You can only browse your lists there. But because your lists sync across devices, you can make changes on a phone, tablet or computer, and you'll see those reflected on your smart TV.

This is a useful update, especially for Movies Anywhere users who pick up a ton of movies during sales or those who redeem tons of digital codes from Blu-ray purchases. The service says that My Lists is "a direct response to specific requests" from users. It should bring some more order to users' libraries, which can get unwieldy as they grow in size.

If you want to see yourself on screen with Hugh Jackman, this is your chance. The promo for Warner Bros. upcoming Reminiscence movie uses deepfake technology to turn a photo of your face — or anybody's face, really — into a short video sequence with the star. According to Protocol, a media startup called D-ID created the promo for the film. D-ID reportedly started out wanting to develop technology that can protect consumers against facial recognition, but then it realized that its tech could also be used to optimize deepfakes.

For this particular project, the firm created a website for the experience, where you'll be asked for your name and for a photo. You can upload the photo of anybody you want, and the experience will then conjure up an animation for the face in it. The animation isn't perfect by any means, and the face could look distorted at times, but it's still not bad, considering the technology created it from a single picture. 

Reminiscence is a sci-fi thriller about Nick Bannister, a "private investigator of the mind." The idea behind the promo is that you're a client looking into your memories to solve a case. The movie will be shown in theatres on August 20th, but like most new releases these days, it will also be available for streaming on HBO Max.

Engadget

Apple has given a release date for the second of two Tom Hanks films it acquired during the pandemic. Finch, a futuristic tale about a reclusive inventor and his canine and robot road buddies, hits Apple TV+ on November 5th. Like Hanks' war movie Greyhound before it, the film became a casualty of the pandemic, mired by release date delays until Apple swooped in to acquire it from Universal. The robot (pictured above) is played by Caleb Landry Jones, fresh off a best actor win at Cannes. 

Hanks plays the titular character, an ailing robotics engineer who emerges from his self-imposed underground exile to journey across a desolate American wasteland. Along for the ride are his dog, Goodyear, and an android who names himself Jeff. Together, they make a dysfunctional family, but can they learn to get along? I guess we'll have to wait till November to find out. 

Finch is also loaded with offscreen talent. The good-natured sci-fi flick is directed by Emmy-winning Game of Thrones lead Miguel Sapochnik, with Alien scribe Ivor Powell and newcomer Craig Luck on screenwriting duties. While director Robert Zemeckis serves as an exec-producer and the film hails from Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which may explain why the plot gives off major Cast Away and AI vibes.

The November release date also signals Apple's possible confidence in the film's awards chances. Either that or it's just looking to add a major movie to its fall line-up, which is already stocked with big hitters like sci-fi series Foundation, the second season of The Morning Show and current affairs show The Problem with Jon Stewart.

Criterion has unveiled its first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases with a six-film slate that includes Citizen Kane, Menace II Society, The Piano, Mulholland Dr., The Red Shoes, and A Hard Day’s Night. The new releases will give film buffs a chance to see some of these films with the highest detail ever, even during their theatrical runs. 

Criterion notes that Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane was its first laserdisc release 37 years ago. "It now rejoins the library after a long absence, making its first appearance in 4K Ultra HD," Criterion wrote in its blog. The other releases represent an eclectic variety of periods ranging from the 1940s with The Red Shoes, 1960s (Hard Day's Night) to the '90s and aughts with Menace II Society, Mulholland Drive and The Piano)

Each title will come in a combo pack that includes both 4K UHD and 1080p Blu-ray versions, along with Criterion's popular special features about each film. Some films will also be available in Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos, though Criterion has yet to say which. 

Criterion's new 4K UHD releases will likely represent the best way to watch classic films at home. If you don't need the super pristine quality, however, it launched the Criterion streaming service in 2019 and now offers over "1,000 important classic and contemporary films," according to the site. 

Marvel has often been taken to task for poor pacing on its shows. The Netflix programs were always said to be padded out, with more installments than they really needed per season. The Disney+ era has given us shows with fewerepisodes, but that hasn’t deterred complaints about slow pacing. What If…?, premiering this week on the service, has a different problem: It’s frantic and rushed, like a podcast episode played at 1.5x speed.

The concept behind What If…? is simple. Take a pivotal moment from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, change one thing, see what happens. In the premiere episode, set during the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter chooses to stay in the room where Steve is receiving the super soldier serum. Steve gets shot, forcing Peggy to jump into the machine and get bulked up in his place.

You’d need to be intimately familiar with the original movie to spot the difference, which is why the omniscient narrator is there to point it out. It’s probably the only time the episode stops to catch its breath.

The problem is that this is a half-hour show attempting to present an alternate version of a two-hour movie. It isn’t even enough to just say that Captain Carter has super powers; they feel the need to show how the events of the entire movie play out, down to the final battle with the Red Skull. There isn’t a lot of time for character development, because they assume you already know the characters well from seeing them on the silver screen. (Also, why is she Captain Carter and not Captain Britain?)

Marvel Studios

It runs from plot point to plot point, a highlight reel of the film with some small and a lot of big changes. You’ll probably want to rewatch the original movie either before or after, just because there are so many winks and nudges to it that the episode simply cannot stand alone. It’s like a DVD extra and fan fiction had a baby — which, to be fair, is what the original comic felt like.

The difference here is that this is a version of What If...? that gets to play in the MCU sandbox, with the voices and likenesses to boot (except for Hugo Weaving, who is once again replaced by Ross Marquand as the Red Skull). Animation is the only way to pull it off, given that the cast and setting changes with every episode so a live action production would be prohibitively expensive.

Marvel Studios

But, despite being owned by one of the most famous animation studios in the world, Marvel Studios went with third-party animators. It’s a cel shaded style, which is more often used in video games and here looks a lot like rotoscoping. It’s sort of stiff and awkward, with more attention paid to making characters look like their actors instead of being more fluid or expressive. It’s a shame, given that Disney’s 2012 short film Paperman utilized a hybrid 2D/3D style which looks similar to this, but with a lot more personality.

Future episodes will explore other divergences from the MCU, like T’Challa becoming Star Lord or Tony Stark getting saved by Killmonger. So it’s likely some episodes will be far more enjoyable than others based on their conceit alone, though Captain Carter is still a solid start. But a good concept can’t completely overcome animation and pacing issues.