Will Leitch, senior writer at Sports On Earth, culture writer for Bloomberg Politics, contributing editor at New York magazine, film critic for The New Republic and founder of Deadspin, is doing his yearly fill-in for Drew Magary on today’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. (Here is 2011’s version, and here’s…

1. Creed works better as an actual movie than it does as a Rocky movie, which is quite the compliment, considering that it’s an excellent Rocky movie, too. (I hadn’t seen it yet when Grierson and I did our Rocky movie rankings on Monday; I’m higher on it than he is.) More than a mere boxing film, it’s a powerful,…

1. It seems insane to think about now, but there was a time when everyone was worried about whether or not Jennifer Lawrence could pull off the Hunger Games films. Cast as Katniss Everdeen just a year after her breakthrough in Winter’s Bone, Lawrence was considered by many an undeniable talent but a little bit green,…

1. There was a time not so long ago when the very notion of James Bond seemed ridiculous—as anachronistic as making a movie about Betamax players or pay phones. There were actual thinkpieces 10 years back about whether James Bond could exist in a post-Austin Powers world. Even Daniel Craig worried about it: “We had to…

The next Academy Awards will be hosted by Chris Rock and will be held on February 28, 2016. That is 130 days from now. By then, the Iowa caucus, and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, will be over. The Super Bowl will be a fading memory. Selection Sunday will be two weeks away. It is a long time from now.

1. I love Bill Murray. You love Bill Murray. We all love Bill Murray. We love him on talk shows. We love him when he pops up in random places, doing random things. But we haven’t collectively loved a new Bill Murray movie in a long time. Sure, we’ve celebrated him in small roles: Zombieland, Moonrise Kingdom, even Get…

1. Crimson Peak is a movie that’s all windup and no pitch. It requires a patience of you that I’m not sure it necessarily earns, and a level of patience it doesn’t feel obliged to reward. It’s not a slog; the movie always looks fantastic, and it has enough earthly delights to string you along its grand gothic groove.…

1. Bridge of Spies is effective, efficient, compelling, smart and absorbing throughout, and I still couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I think we’re starting to lose the Spielberg who was a risk-taker. The guy did exist, you know. After he won his last Oscar for directing Saving Private Ryan in 1998—a movie…

1. It is difficult not to approach Pan with a deep, weary sigh. I am fortunate that people pay me to write about movies, and it’s something that no one should ever take for granted, particularly in this day (year? decade? quarter-century?) of media turmoil. Every assignment is a gift. One of the many, many reasons to…

1. The Martian will make you feel better about America, about the goodness of your fellow man, about the limitless possibilities of human achievement. That it’s also rooted in hard science (or at least a movie’s version of hard science, which is close enough), that all its surprises and accomplishments are borne of…

1. Stonewall misses the point of the Stonewall riots in almost the exact same way that Pearl Harbor missed the point of Pearl Harbor. That’s not a comparison I make lightly. Pearl Harbor turned one of the most seminal moments in American history into the pretext for a lame story about two white schmucks fighting over…

1. If nothing else, you should see Everest on as big a screen as possible. I was fortunate enough to see it in 3-D on a digital IMAX screen—not the same as the IMAX format, mind you, there’s a difference, but still, you know, big—and I’m glad I did. The most you can hope for from a movie about Mount Everest is that it…

1. Whatever your thoughts on The Departed or The Town—the modern Boston mob/crime thrillers that all modern Boston mob/crime thrillers are measured against—it is undeniable that everyone involved was deeply invested in both. Matt Damon had been waiting his whole life to play a character like his Departed rat; I…

1. Man oh man, remember the Newsweek that dubbed M. Night Shyamalan “The Next Spielberg?” Has an entertainment-cover of a national newsmagazine ever aged worse? All right, maybe this one. But man, that Newsweek cover might have been the worst thing that ever happened to Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense was a surprise…

1. New York City is obviously the central setting of thousands of movies, and, being New York City, it’s adept at serving as whatever backdrop you want it to serve. It can connote romance or menace, limitless possibility or untold decadence, Candyland or the Hellmouth. But, as someone who lived there for 13 years, I…

Will Leitch is a senior writer at Sports on Earth, culture writer for Bloomberg Politics, contributing editor at New York magazine and the author of four books. Ten years ago today, he founded Deadspin. He is taking all your questions, about anything. Come ask him stuff!

1. There’s an undeniable kick in watching a reedy nerd unleash cinematic violence, particularly when he’s confused by it, separate from the act, almost observing it. I’ve always thought this was the initial, primal appeal of The Matrix, how Keanu Reeves was a weirdly dispassionate participant in his own fight scenes,…

1. You need a pretty good reason to resuscitate The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—a ’60s television series that went off the air before Jay Z was born—and I’m afraid Guy Ritchie’s movie version doesn’t have one. Perfectly passable, generic, and inoffensive, it vanishes from your brain almost while you’re watching it. This is…