John Cox

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ComicBook.com

3 Forgotten ‘70s Movies That Actually Shaped Their Genres (Including 2 Cult Classics From Beloved Directors) - ComicBook.com

This ComicBook.com list makes the case that three underrated 1970s films, Spielberg's Duel, Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, and Saul Bass's Phase IV, shaped later genres (road-thriller horror, tense siege action-horror, and eco-horror creature features) despite being overlooked today. The piece is useful mainly as a catalogue of how these movies' tropes and techniques quietly spread into the work of later filmmakers.

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Bleeding Cool News

Uncanny X-Men #35 Preview: Rogue Confronts Repentant Demons

In the third part of the "Wild Ride" arc, Rogue confronts a demon-possessed girl while a mysterious figure called Repent offers a potentially dangerous cure for a suffering mutant's condition. The newly formed X-Men team discovers that their recent enemies are connected through a secret tied to one of the Outliers' past, expanding the scope of the ongoing conflict.

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collider.com

25 Best Books of All Time

A rundown that pits centuries-old canon against pulpy favorites and openly acknowledges its own snubs, ranking works from Nineteen Eighty-Four and Dracula down through pop staples like Infinite Jest, A Storm of Swords, and Hitchhiker's Guide. It's notable for slipping in two nonfiction picks—Empire of Pain on the Sackler opioid scandal and Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy, the basis for Goodfellas—alongside the usual literary heavyweights, treating them as equally worthy "books" rather than a lesser category. Worth keeping for its blunt, personal-taste-driven commentary rather than a consensus-driven list.

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screenrant.com

8 Near-Perfect Time Loop Movies That Do Something Different

A rundown of eight time-loop films that twist the familiar Groundhog Day formula in distinct ways: The Endless traps each character in their own separate, coexisting loop as a metaphor for nostalgia's pull; Palm Springs and Happy Death Day complicate the trope with a community of loopers and a mortal, unmasking-the-killer stakes clock, respectively; Donnie Darko and The Matrix Reloaded obscure or truncate the loop's mechanics entirely; and Timecrimes, Primer, and Run Lola Run push the concept toward slasher paradox, hard-science realism, and kinetic videogame-like momentum. Worth keeping as a quick reference for how differently the subgenre can handle repetition, memory, and stakes beyond the standard "same day, personal growth" template.

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screenrant.com

Netflix's The Imperfects: A Dark Superhero Show Cancelled Too Soon

This piece makes the case for The Imperfects, a canceled-too-soon Netflix supernatural drama about three people—a banshee, a chupacabra, and a succubus—created by an experimental gene therapy gone wrong, who band together to hunt down the scientist responsible. It frames the show as a horror-tinged hybrid of The Boys and The Umbrella Academy, all wrapped into a single bingeable 10-episode season that ended on an unresolved cliffhanger. The real hook, though, is that it was Iñaki Godoy's breakout English-language role before he landed Luffy in One Piece, making the show a notable footnote in the career of one of Netflix's current biggest stars.

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www.nytimes.com

Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now

"Significant Other" is a sci-fi horror hybrid about a couple whose backpacking trip in Oregon goes catastrophically wrong after a mysterious object falls from the sky, generating dread through atmospheric filmmaking rather than jump scares while exploring themes of intimacy and deception. "Infinity Pool" follows a blocked writer on vacation who escapes execution by having a clone created and executed instead, then descends into hedonistic depravity with wealthy tourists who exploit the loophole, satirizing how the rich can literally buy their way out of consequences. "Costa Brava, Lebanon" depicts a self-sufficient family's isolation shattered when a landfill is planned next to their compound, using their fragmentation as a metaphor for environmental collapse and societal breakdown.

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Esquire

The 50 Best Mysteries of All Time

This is a curated list of mystery and detective novels spanning from classics like Dracula and Rebecca to contemporary works like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, organized with brief descriptions of each book's plot, themes, and significance to the genre. The selections highlight how mysteries blend with other genres—horror, noir, romance, and literary fiction—and showcase celebrated authors from Agatha Christie and Elmore Leonard to modern writers like Tana French and Jo Nesbø. The list demonstrates the evolution of the mystery novel and its enduring appeal across different subgenres and cultural contexts.

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