Val is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

It’s hard to sum up the high highs and low lows of Val Kilmer’s career since the early ‘90s, but that’s just what Val, Amazon Prime’s engrossing and insightful new documentary, takes on. Directors Leo Scott and Ting Poo skillfully situate Kilmer’s career choices and trajectory within a larger examination of the very nature of stardom itself, juxtaposing decades of archival footage (amassed by the man himself) against his current situation as he recovers from throat cancer, with a double tracheotomy making it difficult for him to speak in anything past a hoarse croak.

With Kilmer mostly unable to talk for himself, he turned to his son, Jack, to read his narration, and the younger Kilmer’s voice sounds so hauntingly similar to his father’s younger years it’s easy to lose ourselves in the illusion that it’s Val himself speaking to us from across the chasm of time. Walking us through his life and career in linear fashion, the documentary has ample discussion (and footage) of his early years and family life (including the trauma of losing his brother at an early age) before he made the leap to stage and screen.

In hindsight, it’s rather remarkable just how much of his life Kilmer managed to capture on home video, with young stars like Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tom Cruise flitting in at various moments. Long before the ubiquity of cell phones made it practically second nature for many, Kilmer did all this when it actually took effort. And while one could be tempted to say that’s the narcissism of an actor at work, the truth is Kilmer did a tremendous service both for himself and us in capturing small behind-the-scenes moments that would otherwise be lost to the ages.

Things like shooting the breeze with Rick Rossovich between takes of Top Gun, watching Kurt Russell don his Wyatt Earp getup on Tombstone, and rocking Marlon Brando in a hammock on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau are all testament to a remarkable life, something Kilmer himself is acutely aware of, especially given the distance of time. The omnipresent video camera also ended up capturing moments such as Kilmer and actor David Thewlis arguing with the late John Frankenheimer on the famously fraught Dr. Moreau set, with the director finally losing his cool over being constantly recorded.

Given just how big of a star Kilmer was at one time and how many big movies he got to be a part of, these snippets of interaction are obviously exciting for any film buff to witness, but they also offer a useful framework of how he views himself –– then and now.

One of the most poignant found footage moments for me wasn’t from a set at all, though; it was a simple scene of Kilmer putting his son in a coin-operated Batmobile from Batman Forever, the kind you see outside a grocery store, allowing the child to experience the innocent joy of being Batman in a way Kilmer himself never really felt while playing the role. We also get a peek into his romance with ex-wife Joanne Whalley, from their whirlwind wedding to their eventual separation and arguments over child visitation. It can feel uncomfortably voyeuristic at times, but it’s nonetheless necessary if the goal is to take in the totality of the man.

In that sense, it’s unquestionably bittersweet to see the archival Kilmer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, speaking so confidently of himself and his craft, and then cutting to him in present day, mostly making do by attending conventions and special events where he interacts with fans and signs autographs. While it’s no doubt rewarding to know your work has touched audiences and continues to entertain them, Kilmer himself seems, if not saddened, then resigned to the reality of his “top of the marquee” days likely being behind him. Of course, that realization also allows him to speak with a candor and clarity about his career that’s refreshing and never catty, guided wonderfully by the directors' steady hands.

Netflix has shared a new featurette for The Witcher Season 2, revealing some story details for the first episode.

In the video, posted to the Netflix Geeked Twitter account, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich confirms that the first episode of Season 2 is an adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's A Grain of Truth. Hissrich describes the news as "the worst-kept secret," presumably because of all of the references to the story so far, including it being one of the episode titles.

THE WITCHER Season 2 premiere episode is adapting the Andrzej Sapkowski short story A Grain of Truth. Here’s what you need to know about how @LHissrich is bringing the beloved Witcher tale to life with Geralt and Ciri. pic.twitter.com/Y0J11I3UMx

— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) August 5, 2021

Hissrich described A Grain of Truth as the "perfect kick-off for season two" as it's a story that explores family dynamics and relationships. In the original tale, Geralt stumbles upon a rundown manor, inhabited by a monstrous, cursed nobleman known as Nivellen — who is being portrayed by Kristofer Hivju in the series.

"It's a story of a father and daughter coming together in a place that doesn't quite feel safe for them. We really get into Nivellen, who is played by the incomparable Kristofer Hivju. We get to explore his character and his backstory with Geralt as well," she explained. "It's about the secrets that we keep from each other, and the monsters that we are inside sometimes."

Season 2 of The Witcher will pick up with Geralt taking Princess Cirilla to his childhood home of Kaer Morhen, where he will task himself with protecting Ciri from the mysterious power she possesses within while the Continent's kings, elves, humans, and demons strive for supremacy outside the walls of the castle, located within the Kingdom of Kaedwen.

Filming for season 2 wrapped up in April after production for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ahead of the second season, the show announced new cast additions for the upcoming season, including Chris Fulton (Bridgerton) in the role of Rience, who is a major antagonist in the Witcher books, which the show is based on.

The Witcher Season 2 is set to premiere on Netflix on December 17. Netflix is also working on The Witcher: Blood Origin, a six-part spin-off prequel series set 1,200 years before Geralt walked the lands of the Northern Kingdoms, and The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, an anime feature film hitting the streaming service on August 23.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Cardy, Joe and Emma are here to build out the ultimate roster for our hot new fighting game, British Sitcom Smash. Things get silly. Before that though, the return of Ted Lasso is discussed alongside the latest Apex Legends update and new sports RPG Dodgeball Academia. Plus, Cardy gives you a list of 1950s films you might want to watch if you haven't, because why not?

Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast and be featured in the feedback section, please send messages to: [email protected].

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Naked Singularity hits theaters on Aug. 6 and will be available On Demand on Aug. 13.

The best thing to say about Naked Singularity is that it’s further proof that John Boyega is one of Hollywood’s most capable leading men. His assured performance manages to save this thinly conceived crime drama from outright tedium, keeping us rooting for a better movie to take hold around it even once it becomes clear that will never happen.

Adapting Sergio de la Pava’s novel of the same name, It screenwriter Chase Palmer, in his directorial debut, attempts to spin a genre movie out of an intriguing metaphor. De la Pava’s novel draws a profound comparison between the unforgiving convictions dealt by the American criminal justice system and the crushing gravitational pull of a black hole, questioning what lies beyond a collapsing abyss that nothing can escape from. Palmer’s adaptation doesn’t only fall short of exploring that concept, but also largely abandons the endeavor of even trying to.

Boyega stars as Casi, a frumpy, overworked New York public defender who is hitting a breaking point in his young career. The only idealist working in his courthouse, Casi finds himself frustrated by his inability to save clients from harsh convictions within an underfunded, overcrowded bureaucracy.

Naked Singularity is at its best during this opening stretch. The action is driven by a wry humor, sticking with Casi as he rolls with the punches. At the same time, it doesn’t minimize the terrible nature of Casi’s clients’ situations. Boyega’s performance is key to maintaining the layered tone of this first act. From dry retorts to defeated pleas, he carries an exhaustion that gives us an idea of how often his good intentions are thwarted by unfair roadblocks.

The argument being made in these scenes is that the criminal justice system is a merciless, life-ruining machine. Naked Singularity begins to stumble once it tries to move on from that thesis. Fed up with his limits as a public defender, Casi finds himself involved in a heist that draws in his impulsive pal at the courthouse (It alum Bill Skarsgård), a former client who’s sick of the life she’s been dealt (Olivia Cooke), and her Tinder hook-up from hell (Ed Skrein).

While the small cast of characters isn’t a drawback on its own, Naked Singularity might have been able to develop its social criticism more if it had a more panoramic scope or an attention to neighborhood texture. Though Casi finds himself stumbling into a rough-and-tumble world of mean cops and shady characters, the movie doesn’t have many ideas of what to do with its New York setting other than giving Cooke’s character a Bay Ridge accent.

Instead, Naked Singularity sticks to its thin archetypes, attempting to reinvent itself as a crime thriller and falling flat on its face. Each complication in the plot plays more as an arbitrary escalation than a genuine threat to the main characters. Other than the indelible image of Boyega wielding a katana, Palmer doesn’t seem to have a strong idea of how to make the heist’s logistics or Casi’s moral dilemma remotely exciting.

Naked Singularity also makes an attempt to incorporate its titular cosmic event, but those gestures to the supernatural really just play as an afterthought. Tim Blake Nelson plays a crank named Angus who will occasionally pop in to spit some stoner philosophy about astrophysics. While these scenes seem intended to tilt the movie’s sense of reality into something more uncertain and auspicious, they come across as extraneous in the long run. None of the occasional visual anomalies — a glitching electronic sign, a brief instance of levitation — make an impression either, seeming more like obligations to the promises of the title. A more adventurous film wouldn’t skirt around a gonzo, thoughtful use of science-fiction imagery.

Worst of all, Naked Singularity commits the cardinal sin of leaving its story off where a more interesting movie is about to begin. While it makes a moral stance against the American criminal justice system, it doesn’t have the imagination to keep following Casi’s intention to combat it. Instead, the film concocts a dull series of familiar crime movie trappings to keep its protagonist busy. Naked Singularity loses its claim to social criticism in the shuffle, leaving things off on a note of unearned, phony optimism.

Vivo is now streaming on Netflix.

From the moment it starts, Vivo wants to pull you in with the kind of aesthetics we've come to expect from Disney/Pixar — photorealistic backgrounds and production design, and the same clay-like character designs the studio has churned out for the past decade or so — before unveiling a bold, striking, and at times experimental animated musical with a powerful message. Vivo unfortunately loses the beat about halfway through, but it's still a solid showing in Sony Pictures Animation's post-Into the Spider-Verse renaissance. Plus, fans of Lin-Manuel Miranda's music will still get enough catchy songs to keep them busy until his next project.

But most importantly, Vivo is absolutely gorgeous. Right out of the gate, director Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) and his team of animators bring the vibrant colors of Havana, Cuba, to life in a way that's similar to the beauty of Makoto Shinkai's Your Name. This is in no small part due to visual consultant Roger Deakins, who gives Vivo a blend of photorealistic lighting and cinematography in the same way he did with the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. The result is an exhilarating opening number full of life and personality. Breathtaking production design and more cartoonish characters collide with Miranda's guajira-meets-hip-hop lyrics and composer Alex Lacamoire's dazzling melody. As the camera dances around the titular kinkajou and his human friend Andrés (Juan de Marcos), circling around them and simulating a grandiose Broadway stage production, Vivo fully captures our attention for what's to come.

The plot is simple enough: Vivo sets off on his own to deliver a special song Andrés wrote for his first musical partner/love, Marta Sandoval (music legend Gloria Estefan), who is preparing for her final concert in Miami. Vivo hitches a ride with Andrés' rebellious, purple-haired niece Gabi (standout performer Ynairaly Simo), and the two embark on a wild adventure. Simo's Gabi completely steals the show the moment she shows up on screen, and that's reflected in the visuals, too, as she disrupts Vivo's quiet island life with her own modern one. Vivo's warm color palette is quickly taken over by Gabi's neon-lit punk-lite pastel aesthetic. Simo's vocal performance, meanwhile, breathes enough life and personality into the character to elevate her beyond the archetypes of the young girl animated protagonists that came before her. Her song, "My Own Drum," is a percussion-heavy hip-hop grrrl anthem that, much like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs the Machines, uses eclectic animation and 2D art styles to drive home Gabi's unruly energy.

And that's really the best thing about the film: seeing a team of animators pull from various art and animation styles to give each musical number its own distinct look. While Vivo's musical scenes are founded in the present, reflecting his desire for things to stay exactly as they are, Gabi's take a wild turn, coming in with stuffed animals that turn into giant Thanksgiving Day parade-style balloons while the ghosts of her dead pets turn into a marching band. All the while, the Andrés-centric ballads are visually influenced by Cuban album covers and travel posters from the '50s and '60s, with the Art Deco giving the sequences a spirited touch of nostalgia to match Andrés' ruminations about past opportunities and lost loves.

For a while, Vivo tries to tell a poignant story of grief and the precious march of time, with a message of taking chances as they come instead of waiting for the right time. Likewise, Gabi also hides a grief-stricken vulnerability behind her outgoing, tough girl personality, as the multigenerational Afro-Cuban family tries to deal with grief each in their own way. Sadly, the movie quickly pivots away from the emotional part of the story in favor of a kid-friendly adventure that plays things safe. The script, by DeMicco and In the Heights writer Quiara Alegría Hudes, comes to an almost complete halt once the action moves to the Everglades for a detour that takes up a big part of the runtime for no discernible reason. We are introduced to more characters like two dull spoonbills (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry and Nicole Byer, who get an equally dull love song), an unnecessary villainous anaconda played by Michael Rooker, and a trio of eco-conscious girl scouts that are just here to stall the plot and kill the momentum.

Vivo doesn't offer much that we haven't seen in animated musicals for the past 30 years, with a paper-thin story that becomes tolerable thanks to a parade of catchy songs infused with Latin rhythms (though some are definitely better than others). Its saving grace is in the visuals, which distinguishes this adventure from Disney's assembly line of animated musicals with a myriad of styles and lively designs that continues to cement Sony Pictures Animation as the most exciting studio to watch for American animated movies.