It’s well-known that filmmaker Darren Aronofsky takes a few years off in-between projects. The last film he directed was the polarizing “Mother!” back in 2017. His rumored return to small-scale filmmaking, with A24’s upcoming “The Whale,” would mean something along the lines of “Black Swan,” “Requiem For A Dream” and his 1998 debut film “The Wrestler.”

A Variety piece by Rebecca Rubin is already laying out the doom and gloom for the movie industry in 2021, at least for the first half of the year.

It has become a yearly tradition for me to publish my list of the best unreleased/undistributed films of the year.

“PVT Chat” stars Julia Fox, who turned a lot of heads in last year’s “Uncut Gems,” but even in the wake of that visceral movie, she goes for broke here, pulling out all the stops as a leather-clad cam girl/femme fatale in director Ben Hozie’s film. “PVT Chat” defies description as it keeps its focus on a wide-eyed burnout (Peter Vack), with a talent for online blackjack and the dominatrix (Fox) he meets in a chat room and masturbates to during private calls every night. When the opportunity for an in-person meeting starts to get flirted with, doubt arises, mistrust comes into the game and reality hits our protagonist like a sledgehammer.

Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ben Stiller, and Ben Kingsley star in this drama about a couple who, taking advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown, attempt a high-risk, high-stakes jewelry heist at a luxurious department store.

Randall Kleiser‘s Grease has made its mark in movie history, nobody is doubting that, the silly and ironic ’50s nostalgia, which was a thing in the mid-70s to early ’80s, made the John Travolta-Olivia Newton John musical a worldwide pohenomenon. This resulted in a haul of $366 million at the box-office, a staggering amount for 1978. And yet, “Grease” is now back in the news for all the wrong reasons as British millennial wokesters, of all people, went straight on social media, after the film had aired on the BBC, to condemn Kleiser’s film for being “racist, rapey, homophobic and slut-shaming.”

Opening on a black screen and the sound of a harsh cough. The first image is that of a bartender picking up a customer’s coin. There’s an emphasis on the touching. Germs, we’re being shown, is the primal enemy here. Then a woman - played by Gwyneth Paltrow - on a Hong Kong business trip has a layover in Chicago before returning home to Minneapolis, the film posits her as “patient zero,” the person who would be catching the mystery virus during her trip, only to have her symptoms fatally worsen and spread.

Warner Bros’ “Wonder Woman 1984” dropped a massive 67 percent in its second weekend of domestic release. its domestic total is now at a paltry $28.5 million in 10 days and $118.5 million worldwide. Don’t expect it to go that much higher in the coming weeks as WW84 is projected to end its theatrical run at around the $130 million mark.

We’re about to relaunch this column. I hope you all had wonderful holidays. It’s 2021, and since we’re all still stuck indoors, unless you live in Florida, then maybe it’s time that you watch Kenneth Lonergan’s 3-hour extended cut of “Margaret“. Lonergan’s cinematic “spiritual” cannot be more relevant today. It’s about disillusionment. Feeling disenfranchised. Being “red-pilled,” so to speak, if you want it in simpler terms. It was previously only available on DVD. The extended cut is now available to stream on HBO Max as a bonus feature accompanying the two-and-a-half-hour theatrical version.

On Christmas Day, Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 1984” was unveiled simultaneously in 2,151 theaters nationwide and on HBO Max. The experiment seems to have worked because, despite audiences having the opportunity to stay indoors and watch WW84 in the comfort of their own homes, millions decided to go to the movie theater instead.

In an interview with Rappler, DP extraordinaire Matthew Libatique confirmed that he would be reuniting with frequent collaborator, director Darren Aronofsky, for his next project. “I’m planning to make a small film with [Darren] Aronofsky that obviously I can’t talk about,” Libatique said. “But yeah, that’s the next thing for me.”