Matthew Monagle

While Star Wars: The Force Awakens left us with plenty of unanswered questions, perhaps no question looms as big over the franchise as the lineage of Daisy Ridley’s Rey. Ever since the film was released, fan theories have run wild with the questions of why Rey was abandoned by her parents and how she may have come by her force sensitivity. Is she the daughter of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Is she the daughter of Luke Skywalker? What is the significance of that flashback sequence? Inquiring minds want to know.

How are your plans for Halloween shaping up? For me, the hardest part of throwing a Halloween party is choosing a soundtrack. We can probably all agree that those sound effect CDs  —  the ones with creaking doors and thunder and maniacal laughter  —  have no business outside of an elementary school haunted house, but then what? Do you put together a playlist of all the obvious soundtrack selections? Do you choose pop songs that have some vague tie-in to the season? Who really wants to hear Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” on Halloween for the umpteenth time, anyways?

Pixar may get most of the headlines, but fans of slightly more off-beat animation have always loved the movies released by Laika Studios. With a list of movies that includes Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls, Laika has a string of critical hits that focus on the supernatural and magic experience of growing up. And while Kubo and the Two Strings brings their movies to unprecedented heights — our own review called it the best Laika movie yet  —  a new interview with director and Laika CEO Travis Knight made it clear we shouldn’t expect to see any sequels anytime soon.

If you did not know that Sony Pictures is working towards the production of a brand new He-Man movie, then you obviously are not one of the 462 supporters of the Change.org petition to have a new Masters of the Universe movie be put into production. The petition also (very helpfully) provides a suggested release date of 2017 or 2018, though I’m sure that the audience would gladly push that back for the right story.