Jacob Hall

The moment former Alaskan governor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for President of the United States, you know the producers at SNL hurried to get Tina Fey on the phone. The beloved former cast member, who just hosted the show last month, famously took on the role of Palin eight years ago and many people believe that her scathing imitation actually did lasting harm to the real Palin’s political chances. In any case, this event allowed SNL to pair Fey’s Palin with Darrell Hammond‘s Trump. Thanks, reality!

It took Avatar two and half months to become the highest grossing movie of all time. Star Wars: The Force Awakens will surpass its domestic box office gross within the next day or two after less than three weeks in release. The big question now is when J.J. Abrams’ sequel will find its ceiling because as of right now, it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was always going to make enough money to make most blockbusters tremble in fear. That was inevitable. It’s a Star Wars movie. The big question lingering over this opening weekend concerned whether or not it’s surely enormous opening weekend would break the records set by Jurassic World earlier this year. And now, with the early estimates in, we can answer that question: yes and no.

SNL commercial parodies are at their best when they’re at their most scathing. The fake ad for a fictional dating app called Settl may not be as dark as that vicious, pro-gun parody from a while back, but it’s a different brand of cynical: Here is the app for people who are tired of trying to find the right person and just want to settle down with, well, any person.

As expected, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 topped the box office charts this weekend. But like the war in the movie itself, it all feels like something of a hollow victory. That may seem like a weird thing to say about a movie that broke $100 million in its opening weekend, but this is a new low for the series’ box office receipts…and it’s not even close.

It was actually a pretty solid weekend at the box office for movies that weren’t brand new. If your movie was playing in its second, third, or even fourth week, you were fine. If your movie was a new release, you were in for a rough couple of days. While the The Martian, Goosebumps, and more showcased impressive legs, a huge batch of other movies faltered this weekend. At least five major releases fell flat on their faces.

The success of Hotel Transylvania 2 proved that family-friendly horror-themed movies stand to make a whole bunch of cash when released in the vicinity of Halloween. Now, Goosebumps is here to ensure that we’ll be getting slightly scary kids’ movies every October for the foreseeable future. The adaptation of the popular book series opened at number one, riding a wave of nostalgia and family appeal to a very strong start, beating out some pretty serious competition.

It’s October and you know what means — it’s time to dust off the horror genre and spend a few weeks screaming at your television. Since actually getting off your couch and actually getting a movie off the shelf is too much effort, we’ve gone ahead and done all of the hard work for you. Here are the 10 best horror movies currently streaming on Netflix Instant. From bonafide classics to newer discoveries, these movies have a little something for everyone.

Pan has had disaster written all over it for the better part of a year now, so it’s not surprising that Joe Wright’s Peter Pan origin story stumbled in its opening weekend. However, no one was prepared for it to stumble as badly as it did as it ran face-first into The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2.

Good reviews and a phenomenal marketing campaign did their job this weekend. No number of foot-in-mouth moments from Matt Damon could harm the opening weekend of The Martian, which opened in the number one spot at the box office. After a surprisingly robust September, this is another sign that we may very looking at one of the bigger fall movie seasons in quite some time.

After a slow start, September 2015 is shaping up to be a pretty solid month for the box office. After last week’s solid numbers, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and Black Mass picked up the baton and ran with it, leading another strong weekend.

Alex Trebek is a cultural institution, a beacon of knowledge and grace under pressure. Everyone loves him. Which is why it’s always amusing to watch the unflappable host of Jeopardy say silly words and phrases in that reliable deadpan of his. A recent episode of the immortal game show saw him forced to say the name “Turd Ferguson,” which should amuse anyone with a passing knowledge of modern comedy.

After September opened with a whimper, we were prepared for a dull couple of weeks. It looks like we shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. The one-two punch of The Perfect Guy and The Visit have suddenly made the least interesting month of the year interesting, opening big and opening close enough to one another to make for an interesting race. In the slower movie months, weekends like these are rare treats.

Summer is officially over, September is here, and the movies stink. While the big releases and heavy-hitters of the fall movie season make the festival rounds or rev up their marketing campaigns, audiences have to tough it out and wade through a lot of not-so-good movies. Welcome to September. It’s like this every year. Get ready for an excruciating month at the movies and at the box office.

All summer movie seasons end with a whimper and 2015 was no different. The final weekend of August was a pretty sad display across the board, with Straight Outta Compton nabbing the number one spot by default while just about every new release faltered. You know it’s a slow weekend when a movie promoted exclusively to faith-based audiences nabs the number two spot.

Every time a movie about and for audiences who aren’t white and male does well, everyone acts like it’s a big surprise. “Black people and women like movies? Who’da thunk it?” It’s actually not surprising at all that Straight Outta Compton had a massive opening, handily defeating its more standard competition. Because all kinds of people like movies and when you make movies for all kinds of people, you end up with huge weekends at the box office.

It should come as no surprise that fancy new limited editions of the original six Star Wars movies are hitting Blu-ray later this year. Did you think Disney and Lucasfilm weren’t going to do everything in their power to wring every last penny out of this devoted fan base? After all, everything about Star Wars: The Force Awakens has us weak in the knees. We have never been more vulnerable to large corporations exploiting our love. And now we know what love looks like: a series of very cool steelbook Blu-rays, complete with new art.

Jurassic World is finally starting to slow down at the box office, but it’s going to bow out as the third highest-grossing film of all time at the domestic box office and international box office. That means that the only director to have made a more financially successful film than Colin Trevorrow is James Cameron of Titanic and Avatar fame. Not bad for a guy who was toiling away in indie obscurity a few years ago. Anyway, Trevorrow found some time in between taking baths in tubs filled with cash to chat about the inevitable sequel, dropping the first hints about what we can expect from the follow-up to Jurassic World.

At the time of this writing, early estimates for the weekend box office have Ant-Man edging out Pixels for the top spot in this week’s top 10. That could change. With less than $1 million separating the films, Pixels may very well slide into first place tomorrow, winning one very close competition. But even if it does claim ultimate victory, it doesn’t change the fact that Pixels’ opening weekend is a massive disappointment and another nail in the coffin of Adam Sandler’s career.

It would be easy to label the opening weekend for Ant-Man a failure. After all, it’s significantly lower than the openings for recent Marvel Studios movies and it’s a good $130 million less than the three-day opening Avengers: Age of Ultron had a few months ago. But let’s not be so hasty. Its opening numbers may not have blown anyone away, but Ant-Man’s box office arrival is textbook Marvel.