Published Aug 13, 2026, 12:02 PM EDT
A cinematic obsessive with the filmic palate of a starving raccoon, Rob London will watch pretty much anything once. With a mind like a steel trap, he’s an endless fount of movie and TV trivia, borne from a misspent youth of watching monster movies on TV, perusing the sun-faded goods at the local video rental shop, and staining his fingers with ink from the Video Movie Guide. Areas of interest include science fiction, film noir, horror flicks, ’70s disaster pictures, Bond movies, ’90s action, giant robots, dinosaurs, super heroes, and the exuberantly schlocky output of Cannon Films. He also enjoys both Star Trek and Star Wars when they’re good, and maybe even more when they’re bad. As a Canadian, he also has a vested interest in Canadian movies and TV shows, especially the cheesier ones dubbed “Canuxploitation.”
An expert on Marvel Comics, he has also written for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and is a member of the Marvel Research Team. He can frequently be found pontificating on comic-book continuity or bemoaning the misfortunes of the Toronto Maple Leafs on his Twitter account.
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Hell is empty, but, at long last, The Devils are here. Ken Russell’s shocking and controversial 1971 horror film was a sensation upon its release, but it’s been officially unavailable to watch for decades. Now, in anticipation of its recut and remastered re-release this fall, you can watch the new trailer for The Devils. Based on the non-fiction novel The Devils of Loudun, by Brave New World’s Aldous Huxley, and the subsequent play The Devils, by John Whiting, both of which were based on one of the most notorious witch trials in history, The Devils is set in the city of Loudun, France, in 1634. The charismatic priest Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed, Gladiator) controls the city. He is unfaithful to his vows of chastity…but not with the unhinged abbess of the local convent, Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave, Julia). Consumed by jealousy, she accuses him of witchcraft, and the city soon descends into Satanic madness.
Russell’s hypnotic, sacrilegious imagery is front and center in the new trailer, which showcases a newly restored print of the film; it has also had all of its excised material restored, in accordance with the wishes of the late writer-director Russell, who died in 2011. Horror maestro Guillermo del Toro has long been a champion of the film, and had nothing but praise for the new cut: “The restoration of the material is like cleaning the Sistine Chapel with saliva. It is insane, the epic size of the film – I mean, I’ve seen it on the big screen in Telluride at a theater – I’ve never seen the movie until I saw this restoration.” It will be released in theaters by the new Warner Bros. specialty label Clockwork for one week only, starting on October 16. For the first time, the studio will release the film with the rare NC-17 rating, barring entrance to any audience members under the age of 17.
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
The Devils was explicitly violent and sexual, featuring extended scenes of torture and masturbation. Combined with Russell’s typical fascination with sacred imagery and criticism of religious institutions, it was profoundly shocking to contemporary moral guardians and film critics, with both deeming it pornographic. Many scenes from the film were excised before it could be shown theatrically, much to Russell’s distress. It has subsequently been very sporadically available on home media; the upcoming theatrical release is the first time the full cut of the film has been available through official channels for decades.
The Devils will be released in theaters for a one-week engagement starting on October 16. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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Sister Jeanne des Anges