Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, the cooperative open-world looter-shooter from Rocksteady Games and the latest installment in the Batman: Arkham series, was released earlier this month to an all-but-unanimously tepid reception.
27.01.2024 - 15:05 / polygon.com / David Ayer / William Friedkin / Toussaint Egan / Edgar Wright
Greetings, Polygon readers!
It feels like the year only just started, and January is nearly behind us. We’ve already seen some impressive movies so far, with surprise hits like Mayhem! and David Ayer’s The Beekeeper, and there are even more exciting new releases slated to come out in February. Before we get there, though, we’ve rounded up our selections of the best movies to watch before they leave streaming platforms at the end of the month. We’ve got Janicza Bravo’s hilarious and bizarre black-comedy crime movie Zola, Edgar Wright’s 2010 cult classic Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, an explosive early-aughts kaiju classic, and much more.
Here are the best movies you should watch before they leave streaming this January.
Director: William Peter Blatty
Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Jason Miller
Leaving Criterion Channel: Jan. 31
This past October, I included The Exorcist novelist William Peter Blatty’s 1990 threequel to William Friedkin’s masterful adaptation of that book as the final entry in our annual Halloween Countdown list of horror recommendations. The reason why is simple: For a franchise made up almost entirely of regrettable entries that repeatedly attempt (and fail) to emulate the iconic terror of the original film, The Exorcist III is the sole sequel that came the closest to achieving that feat, through its willingness to go out on a limb and tell its own equally terrifying story.
Based on Blatty’s 1983 novel Legion, the film follows William Kinderman (George C. Scott), a Georgetown police lieutenant assigned to investigate a series of murders possibly linked to an infamous killer believed to have passed years prior. His investigation leads him to the psych ward of a local hospital, where a mysterious amnesiac resembling Kinderman’s deceased friend Father Karras is being treated. Though infamously plagued by several pre- and post-production problems, The Exorcist III is a genuinely fascinating and thoroughly terrifying movie that probes the same territory as the original but from its own unique perspective. If for nothing else, it’s got easily one of the scariest jump scares ever committed to film, but I’m not telling you when it happens. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. —Toussaint Egan
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin
Leaving Netflix: Feb. 1
Edgar Wright’s romantic action comedy is the textbook definition of a “zeitgeist” film, embodying both the meteoric popularity of the comic that inspired it and the generational verve and aesthetic of the 2010s. Based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a box-office bomb when it was initially released, but the film has steadily grown a cult following in the
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, the cooperative open-world looter-shooter from Rocksteady Games and the latest installment in the Batman: Arkham series, was released earlier this month to an all-but-unanimously tepid reception.
So, there's pretty much a new Sea Dogs game, but first I have a lot of context to share. If you'd rather not indulge in the long and confusing history of a cult classic pirate series, just scroll down until just after the picture of some pirates in front of a ship and that'll take you straight to the point.
OpenAI's Sam Altman said the United Arab Emirates could serve as the world's “regulatory sandbox” to test artificial intelligence technologies and later spearhead global rules limiting their use.
An upcoming game about taking planet-wrecking corporations to court hopes to go beyond its onscreen battles by raising money for real-life environmental aid. Behind All Rise is a team including both climate experts and top-notch games talent with credits spanning Horizon Forbidden West, Thirsty Suitors, League of Legends and Paradise Killer.
It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.
Given that Microsoft have spent considerable time and effort becoming the biggest cock-of-the-walk possible, it does, I suppose, make sense that their layoffs are correspondingly massive. In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Phil Spencer is very sad to reveal to the staff that, in order to grow, the combined powers of Microsoft's 22k-strong Gaming Division have to be denuded to the tune of 1,900 human beings. That amounts to about 8% of the division.
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER & 4070 Ti SUPER GPUs launch in a few days but some buyers have got their cards earlier than everyone else.
Greetings, Polygon readers!
Story modes in sports games have had a long-standing problem. Scripted narratives clash with the “anything can happen” nature of sports, which means what happens in the actual games can be in direct opposition to what happens in the narrative.
Developer Supermassive Games' branching-narrative horror, Until Dawn, which exclusively hit PlayStation in 2015, is the latest video game to get the film adaptation treatment. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Shazam! and Annabelle: Creation director David F. Sandberg will direct the Until Dawn movie.
The Last of Us 2 Remastered's director doesn't understand the mixed response to the re-release, arguing, "it's the best way to play."
The Nintendo Switch has had a lot of success in the nearly six years since its release. The console-handheld hybrid has been on the market since 2017, and a slew of fantastic games from first- and third-party developers have launched over the course of the system’s life cycle. Recently, heavy hitters such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pokémon Scarletand Violet, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder have boosted the system’s appeal, while a healthy list of upcoming Switch games continues to drum up excitement.