💥 US military bombed Russian infrastructure? 💥

The consequences of this Biden blunder could soon be deadly for US citizens. [LOGO OST]( Below is an important message from one of our highly valued sponsors. Please read it carefully as they have some special information to share with you.   Many trials of the shortened workweek have shown positive results. It’s an increasingly viable solution for some firms – but for others, this new set-up won’t be on the table. T The idea of a four-day workweek used to be such a pipedream that it was barely on the radar for most workers and firms. But in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies around the world have given this this set-up a go – and gathered promising results. In the US and Ireland, a six-month trial among 33 volunteer companies in 2022 showed a positive impact on company performance, productivity and employee wellbeing. Employees working the shortened week reported less stress and fatigue, plus improved work-life balance and satisfaction. The 27 companies that submitted a final survey rated the trial a nine out of 10. In a 2022 UK trial of 70 firms, 86% of companies said the four-day week was such a success, they planned to keep it in place after the pilot ended. They cited benefits such as increased productivity and significant financial savings for employees on transport and childcare. Similar trials in Belgium, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have thrown up equally promising results for companies. And – unsurprisingly – employees seem especially keen to make shorter working weeks the norm. Yet despite the overwhelmingly positive data, a four-day workweek still seems out of reach for many workers. Tech workers in agile, forward-thinking companies might hope for such a benefit in the near future, but it is harder to envisage the same change for schoolteachers or office workers in more traditional companies. Ultimately, some industries and deeply entrenched work cultures mean the four-day workweek may not be realistic for all employees – at least for now. Finding the right fit Technology and office-based industries have made the greatest inroads into reducing work hours so far. “It is really taking off as a notable trend in areas like tech, software, ICT [internet communication technology], finance and professional services – knowledge-based roles that used to be primarily office-based, but are now in many cases are hybrid or remote,” says Joe O’Connor, director and co-founder of the Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence, based in Toronto. While a mindset of agility and innovation is often baked into such companies, they also have an advantage in terms of easy, time-saving solutions. Measures such as introducing meeting-free days can enable employees to focus purely on productivity and radically reduce work hours, while concurrently maintaining output – something far easier to do in nimble organisations. We have seen very successful examples everywhere, from non-profits to manufacturing companies, to even hospitality – Joe O’Connor In other sectors, shortening the working week is possible, but requires re-thinking long-established norms. Consulting and law, for instance, are often organised around the concept of the billable hour – meaning less work automatically equals less income. But such cultures can change, believes O’Connor: “We're starting to see examples of law firms moving to four-day weeks by switching from billing by the hour to billing by project value, or by reducing their non-billable overheads so that their teams are more focused on client work.” The viability of this shortened workweek for companies in these less-flexible industries may also look different than what other, more nimble firms and sectors are able to do. For instance, “if [these firms] close on Friday and give everyone the same day off, that makes coordination with clients, suppliers and the rest of the economy harder”, says Pedro Gomes, author of Friday is the new Saturday, and coordinator of an upcoming Portuguese government trial of the four-day workweek. “The alternative is to give different people different days off, so you maintain working five days, but then you need communication processes in teams to be able to deal with days when colleagues are not there.” As such, while collaborative workplaces like advertising agencies might choose for all employees to take the same day off to better enable team coordination, industries that rely on trade throughout the week, like hospitality and service, may establish processes for salaried, non-shift workers to take off different days. In this way, many experts believe the four-day workweek can adapt to suit most industries. “We have seen very successful examples everywhere,” adds O’Connor, “from non-profits to manufacturing companies, to even hospitality.” Some experts believe there are industries, such as manufacturing, that may have a more difficult time pivoting to a shortened workweek (Credit: Getty Images) Some experts believe there are industries, such as manufacturing, that may have a more difficult time pivoting to a shortened workweek (Credit: Getty Images) Entrenched culture In the current workplace, some important predictors of whether an organisation is likely to successfully implement a shorter working week may be company size and culture. So far, few major international companies have run trials of the four-day workweek. Despite positive results from a trial by Microsoft in Japan and Unilever in New Zealand, other major corporations have been slow to follow suit. “Large companies have the financial capacity to make the change, but much more rigid structures,” says Gomes. “In practice, what we see is more small- and medium companies trialling the four-day workweek because they are more agile, and they usually have a CEO or a founder that has a very good picture of how it would impact the whole business.” In other words, leaders of smaller firms may have less red tape to deal with, and find it easier to forecast how widespread change will impact the company overall than leaders in sprawling global organisations with more labyrinthian, layered structures. But in companies of all sizes, a certain type of manager could also be resistant changing entrenched norms – a significant barrier to the implantation of shorter weeks. Although the global movement in support of the four-day week is gathering pace, it is not yet a mainstream work practice, and undertaking such progressive change requires a high level of trust between leaders and workers. If managers don't trust that employees can make a success of the change, they are unlikely to want to even test it. (Notably, productivity-related trust issues have been a major problem for managers throughout the pandemic.) “The biggest barrier to companies introducing four-day workweeks is likely a combination of entrenched culture and resistant bosses,” says Benjamin Laker, professor at Henley Business School, in Reading, UK. “Some managers may view the shorter workweek as reducing their control, or making it more difficult to manage employees.” In other words, risk-averse managers might question why they would shake up a system that’s already working. In cases where four-day workweeks have proven unpopular among employees, a common issue has been reports of managers intensifying performance measurement, monitoring and productivity pressures. So, although many workers cite better wellbeing in some areas, the result of these added elements can spike worker stress levels. “If an organisation culturally doesn't have that trust but instead has a very top down, centralised decision-making structure, they would probably struggle to make this work,” adds O’Connor. Although the global movement in support of the four-day week is gathering pace, it is not yet a mainstream work practice, and undertaking such progressive change requires a high level of trust between leaders and workers Other organisations for which four-day workweeks are likely off the table are hourly- and service-based – like restaurants, retail and healthcare – where a shorter workweek and subsequently fewer shifts ultimately means lower compensation. Although workers in these industries would likely experience similar benefits from reduced workloads, creating a pathway to less labour may be impossible, if it means losing out on pay. The new normal Even facing resistance from some leaders, experts say it is likely the four-day week will become more mainstream. In sectors that are already welcoming the shift, the 32-hour week is emerging as “a as a tool for competitive advantage in terms of talent, attraction and retention”, says O’Connor. “You could see a scenario in tech where by 2026, not offering a four-day week is almost a competitive disadvantage.” And the more companies that make the switch, the more others who have not yet made the move may feel pressure to do so. “It’s hard to implement a four-day week when the rest of the economy is organized in a five-day week,” says Gomes, “but the moment you have the job market coordinating on a four-day week, then it forces the rest of the economy.” Some employers look to hire and continually turn over junior employees – sometimes harming young workers’ careers before they’ve even begun. S Sarah had always dreamed of working in the fashion industry. Aged 21, she decided to follow her dream, move to London and find a career she loved. “Like many young people, my passion was fashion,” she says. “But the reality wasn’t quite so glamorous.” After working for less than a year in fashion retail, Sarah secured an e-commerce assistant role in the head office of a global luxury brand. In both jobs, she was surrounded by like-minded twenty-somethings, all of whom wanted to succeed in the fashion world. “It’s like any creative industry: young people always see it as cool to work in,” she says. “And the perks are great, even in sales: we’d get heavily discounted items all the time.” However, Sarah adds that there was always a high office turnover – particularly among low-level staff. “Young employees would quit all the time: an 18-year-old intern only lasted a week after realising her job was essentially unpaid manual labour, and long hours just carrying and packing away clothing returned from shoots. The interns who lasted months would eventually quit from burnout. There was just a steady churn of young, impressionable workers and nothing was ever done about it – it just became a test of who had the thickest skin.” While Sarah lasted in her job for two years, the excitement of working in fashion soon gave way to frustration and tedium: “Admin tasks with long hours and bad pay.” Without management offering her a clear career trajectory or a sense of progress, she says her job eventually ground her down – she quit. “Both management and employees knew it was a competitive workplace to be at – that your job would always be in high demand. If you left, you’d be replaced with another young worker excited to be there.” Experts say there are many employers that specifically hire new graduates looking to pursue their passions – often in competitive, even ‘glamourous’ careers. In some cases, this can be great for these workers, who are looking for a way into an industry of their dreams. Sometimes, however, young employees can get ground down in low-paying, demanding roles, as employers know that vacancies will always be hotly desired. These situations can leave early-career workers, hoping to establish themselves, making them vulnerable to burnout or disillusionment right at the start of their careers. ‘Unclouded by experience’ Many jobs are set up with the expectation that younger workers will grow into them. There are often clear paths for promotion and goals to reach; sometimes companies even offer mentorship and development programmes to guide entry-level employees up the ladder. Even if the climb can be a slog, many employers want to invest in workers to stay with an organisation. Yet experts say there are other companies that take a different tack – setting up infrastructures in which they hire young employees that have little, if any, opportunity for upward trajectory, and then load them up with demanding tasks. In these situations, employers often expect that these young workers will leave the organisation at some point – whether it’s because they’re at a dead-end or they’ve burnt out from the position. Then, they are generally replaced by other young workers, destined for the same fate. There was just a steady churn of young, impressionable workers and nothing was ever done about it – it just became a test of who had the thickest skin – Sarah Of course, young employees are often expected to grind out the early years of their careers by showing ambition, persistence and resilience in the workplace – in some sense, ‘paying their dues’. Not every young worker without an explicit growth path is at a company that intentionally churns through entry-level talent, says Helen Hughes, associate professor at Leeds University Business School, UK. She points to public relations, for instance, where starting, lower-paid roles “fit into a person’s career trajectory: the expectation is that in the early stages, you have to take junior roles before you can progress”. Yet some decide to establish what Hughes calls a “short-sighted model". There are many reasons companies choose to churn through young workers, instead of investing in them. First, there are the financial implications. Fresh grads begin at the bottom of the ladder on starting salaries, and don’t have the same compensation expectations of experienced employees. “Employers often hire graduates because they can pay them less,” says Dominik RaÅ¡kaj, marketing manager at job listings site Posao.hr, based in Croatia. “It’s effectively a source of cheap, undervalued labour.” Additionally, entry-level workers may be more malleable and willing to accept certain working conditions. “The less experienced the employee is, the more open-minded and generally accepting they are of a work environment,” says Hughes. “They’re unclouded by experience, which brings advantages to an employer – they’re easier to mould.” Some young workers discover that they're assigned to tasks they didn't expect to be doing (Credit: Getty Images) Some young workers discover that they're assigned to tasks they didn't expect to be doing (Credit: Getty Images) However, this can leave young workers looking to break into a career susceptible to mis-sold jobs or toxic working environments. “Graduates can find themselves vulnerable to exploitation where they haven’t acquired the experience to know what’s OK and what’s not,” says Hughes. “Graduates can get a sense that it’s really competitive, so they feel desperate to accept a challenging role that may not have the best conditions.” ‘It can warp someone’s view’ In these situations, the short-term risk is burnout. Workers may find themselves burdened with long hours, massive workloads or menial tasks, and, due to their lack of seniority, unable to advocate for themselves. It can leave workers frustrated at best, or in cases like Sarah’s, under a lot of stress. Many, however, feel like they don’t have a choice but to stick it out, especially if they’re trying to break into certain industries with high barriers to entry. For young workers desperate to establish themselves in a competitive career, faced with long hours and bad working conditions, the effects can be insidious. “Some might decide to stay and burn themselves out because they’re early-career,” says Hughes. “But without past experiences to benchmark against, the risk is they accept this is what the workplace entails, bad conditions become normalised and the young worker ends up thinking this is all they’re worth.” This can have longer-term knock-on effects for these young workers, souring their expectations of what it means to be in the workforce at all. “You see workers begin to withdraw, hold back the effort and display quiet quitting behaviours,” says Jim Harter, chief scientist for workplace management and wellbeing at US analytics-firm Gallup. “It can warp someone’s view of what a career means, and their relationship with work.” Graduates can find themselves vulnerable to exploitation where they haven’t acquired the experience to know what’s OK and what’s not – Helen Hughes “Graduates can be so worried about getting a job that they think any will do,” adds Hughes. But working long, hard hours on bad pay with no end in sight creates long-term consequences. “You adjust to the norm around you – bad norms – right at the beginning of your career.” The good news is the current employee-favourable job market can give young workers options if they find they’re in an exploitative position with no path to advance, or that’s becoming highly taxing. “There are now also more questions being asked about graduate jobs,” says Hughes. “And there’s more calling out of bad work practices on social media, meaning there’s greater pressure for organisations that don’t look after their young employees to change.” However, even in the age of staffing shortages and online reviews, many of these tough environments will endure. This means the burden may fall to entry-level employees to recognise when they’re in a bad position. But identifying this may be easier said than done, since employees with little workforce experience may not know what’s standard in a junior role, versus what may be a step too far. Sarah, for her part, did recognise that her job had pushed her to the breaking point and left. But instead of moving within the industry, she took another path. She now works for a creative agency outside of fashion. She says she's much happier in her new role that offers clear progression, challenging work and varied daily tasks. “[Fashion] may have sounded like an impressive place to work,” she says, “but I realised it’s more important to have a fulfilling job than a cool name on a CV.” Sarah’s surname is being withheld for career considerations Even so, such widespread societal change would take “many years”, he says, and some industries will inevitably be left until last. Schools, for example, might struggle to implement a four-day week for full-time staff unless parents were already working such arrangements en masse. There is also the possibility that companies will turn to other less drastic measures than a four-day week. “I predict that no-meeting days, flexible work hours and other innovative approaches to work-life balance will become standard practice in the near future,” says Laker. For now, the shorter workweek may not be widespread, but there’s momentum around the globe to keep the experiment going. In 2023, trials of the four-day workweek are planned or ongoing in Australia, Spain, Scotland and more. “There's an element of ‘the genie’s out of the bottle’. We're not going back to the way we were working pre-pandemic,” says O’Connor. “The four-day week is not going to be 100% of the economy, much like the five-day week is not wholly representative of the economy now, but it certainly could become the new normal.” A former CIA and Pentagon adviser just released this new presentation… …showing his explosive evidence of Biden… …ordering direct US military intervention [with Russia.]( Kwan pointed out the film's realism in a podcast about its evolution. "Everyone is in their own worlds. All the characters are speaking past each other. They're talking different languages. The whole thing felt like an opportunity to show everyone that we already live in the multiverse," he said. That may not be the multiverse of Dr Strange, but Kwan has a point. The film's quickly-changing swirl of colours and places, including a now-famous universe where everyone has hot dogs for fingers, are outsized versions of today in all its disjointed, internet-busy frenzy. And beneath that is a deeper, more easily relatable realism, a story of family conflict and reconciliation. We are always attached to Evelyn, the often-baffled heroine played by Yeoh with immense warmth and wit. Even as she leaps from one iteration of herself to another – in one of the many overlapping worlds she is a martial arts movie star, in others a chef and even a small rock – we never lose sight of the original Evelyn who runs a laundromat, argues with her husband and daughter, and is just trying to get through a tax audit. Her steady, common-sense point of view carries us through the film. Drawing multigenerational and multicultural audiences, and with tropes from martial arts, satire and surrealism, it truly has something for everyone, all in one movie That combination of a human heart, artistic ambition and a style that reflects our short-attention, TikTok era has propelled the film, made for less than $20 million, to more than $100 million at the box office so far, and 11 Oscar nominations. In the endless tug of war between Oscar voters who favour commercial hits and those who are devotees of inventive films with an indie sensibility, EEAAO checks both of those boxes. Everything Everywhere, starring Michelle Yeoh, is set in a multiverse but also tells a story of family conflict (Credit: Alamy) Everything Everywhere, starring Michelle Yeoh, is set in a multiverse but also tells a story of family conflict (Credit: Alamy) Its year-long awards journey started out in small, indie fashion. The film premiered in March 2022 at South by Southwest, a perfect fit for that festival's younger audience and Daniels' kinetic style. Glowing reviews gave it artistic cachet, and word of mouth helped fuel its popularity. Soon the breadth of its appeal emerged. Drawing multigenerational and multicultural audiences, and with tropes from martial arts, satire and surrealism, it truly has something for everyone, all in one movie. This story offers three generations viewers can identify with. And the film's appeal to immigrant families of all ethnicities is strong. Opinion pieces have been written about its particular resonance for Asian identity, embracing the idea that the film's fragmented world reflects real life. "To be an immigrant is to live in a fractured multiverse," the Princeton professor Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in The Washington Post. Look at the first scenes, and it's clear that the film, loopy though it becomes, is built on a bedrock of frenetic domestic realism. In the apartment behind the laundromat the Wang family owns, Evelyn is harried, cooking, sorting through tax receipts, running out front to deal with customers. Her husband, Waymond (Quan), is more madcap, putting googly eyes on the laundry bags. But he also has divorce papers in his hands, the only way he thinks he can get his wife's attention. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), visits with her girlfriend, but Evelyn doesn't dare tell her own Old World father that her daughter is gay. Googly eyes aside, it's just like life in all its hectic overload. Weird but relatable When Evelyn and Waymond visit the tax office, the tone changes, and a mix of genres widens the film's allure for varied audiences. A Waymond from an alternate universe instructs Evelyn on how to jump from one dimension to another so she can save the world by stopping the force of evil. The film's martial-arts action begins full force as security guards come after him and alt-Waymond swings his fanny pack as a weapon. Yeoh, who built her career as a star of martial arts movies, and Quan, who has worked as a stunt coordinator, leap and kick with the best of them. The comedy can be absurd and wildly funny but is also tethered to real fears. Jamie Lee Curtis makes the dreaded tax auditor a cartoonish yet ominous figure, with her dour expression and frumpy clothes. The performance earned her an Oscar nomination for supporting actress and, in another sign of the film's momentum, the Screen Actors Guild award, which almost everyone assumed would go to Angela Bassett. All that universe-leaping makes Evelyn second-guess her life choices, and the film raises existential questions And each universe has its own oddity. The one in which Evelyn is a chef offers a twist on the film Ratatouille. Here her colleague has a raccoon under his toque instead of a rat. In the movie-star universe, Evelyn has not married Waymond, but meets him again years later, both of them now sophisticated and successful. They talk on a moody, blue-tinged street that is a homage to the films of Wong Kar-wai at his most romantic. Such references give the film wit and are a treat for cinephiles, but the episodes also work for audiences that don't pick up the allusions. EEAAO is ambitious but not pretentious, another plus for Oscar voters. Jamie Lee Curtis plays a tax auditor who is cartoonish yet ominous (Credit: Alamy) Jamie Lee Curtis plays a tax auditor who is cartoonish yet ominous (Credit: Alamy) All that universe-leaping makes Evelyn second-guess her life choices, and the film raises existential questions. So did Swiss Army Man, in which Hank (Paul Dano), stranded on a deserted island, has conversations about life, death and sex with the corpse that has floated ashore. But Swiss Army Man has more cleverness than heart. In EEAAO the emotion is real even when the plot is outlandish. We soon learn that the evil force Evelyn must conquer, Jobu Tabacki, is Joy. In one universe Jobu is part of a nihilistic cult, in a place where a giant everything bagel (Daniels are not beyond sophomoric humour) can suck all the energy out of the world. "Nothing matters," she tells Evelyn, who tries to convince her daughter that life itself matters. Weird but not unrelatable, their scenes are piercing reflections of their mother-daughter conflicts and their existential questions in our own universe. Off-screen, EEAAO has a parallel universe of stories, the kind Oscar voters often embrace. Its nominations include Yeoh for best actress and Quan for best supporting actor, and through awards season – including Golden Globe and SAG awards for both of them – the film's campaign has been enhanced by the actors' personal stories. Yeoh, the star of the classic, 2000 martial-arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has had smaller roles lately in Hollywood films, including the mother-in-law in Crazy Rich Asians. But she has also been undervalued for years. The first Asian nominated for an Oscar for lead actress, she has leaned into the significance of her recognition. As she said in her Golden Globes acceptance speech, "When I first got to Hollywood it was a dream come true until I got here, because I came here and was told 'You're a minority,'" and was dismissed as a possible lead. Her response is both sincere and smart campaigning. Oscar voters love a poignant, relevant speech. They also love a comeback story, and Quan has a great one. After being a child actor, playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), he couldn't find work, and virtually stopped acting for decades. In his Golden Globes acceptance speech for supporting actor, he said, "For so many years I was afraid I had nothing more to offer, that whatever I did would never surpass what I did as a kid." Who wouldn't root for these two? Although Everything Everywhere is absurdist and weird, underlying that are real and universal emotions (Credit: Alamy) 1. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Dungeons & Dragons, the hugely influential role-playing game, was made into a film in 2000, but that was Dingy & Dragging. Now comes another attempt to turn the game into a swashbuckling fantasy blockbuster, this time starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page as its luckless heroes, and Hugh Grant as its sneering villain. As that casting might suggest, the film's comic tone is a long way from the doom and gloom of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones: its directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, are best known for a beloved comedy, Game Night. "They're really funny guys," Pine said to Tamera Jones at Collider. "They have a history of making really great comedy. And their idea for how they wanted to tell the story was exactly what I like about big-budget filmmaking, which is not too cool for school. There's an earnest, real heart to it with a really sweet message." On general release from 31 March (Credit: Netflix) (Credit: Netflix) 2. Luther: The Fallen Sun Now that Idris Elba is 50, his fans might have to give up on their dream that he will eventually be cast as James Bond. But they can console themselves with Luther: The Fallen Sun, a Netflix spin-off of the long-running BBC series. Since we last saw John Luther, the disgraced police detective has been in prison, but he breaks out to track down a wealthy serial killer played by Andy Serkis. Can John catch the maniac before another police detective (Cynthia Erivo) catches John? The series' creator, Neil Cross, promises to answer that question with more locations and elaborate action sequences than the TV series ever had. He told Morgan Jeffery in the Radio Times: "What we've been able to do [with the movie] – having delivered every episode of Luther on budgets which are comically small – is to have a wider canvas and a bigger budget to tell the kind of stories that we we've always wanted to be able to tell. And we've really been given the opportunity – while staying entirely true to Luther." Released on 10 March on Netflix (Credit: Warner Bros) (Credit: Warner Bros) 3. Shazam! Fury of the Gods The brightest and funniest of DC's superhero blockbusters gets a sequel from the same director, David F Sandberg. Asher Angel is back as Billy Batson, a schoolboy who can turn into a Superman-like demigod, played by Zachary Levi. And now his foster siblings can turn into superheroes, too. "It's sort of an extension of the first movie," Sandberg told Devan Coggan at Entertainment Weekly. "He finally found a family in that movie. But now, we see him struggling a bit now that they're growing up... He doesn't want everyone to just scatter and go do their own thing." Billy also has to deal with the fury of the gods – or rather goddesses. Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler play the vengeful Daughters of Atlas, so if you've ever wanted to see Dame Helen flying into battle alongside minotaurs, harpies and unicorns, now's your chance. On general release from 17 March (Credit: Lionsgate) (Credit: Lionsgate) 4. John Wick: Chapter 4 Keanu Reeves puts his black suit on for a fourth time to play John Wick, a retired hitman who is drawn back into a shadowy assassins' guild. Since the release of the first film in 2014, the stories have grown more complicated, and the series' mythology has grown more elaborate. Is John Wick becoming a globe-trotting action franchise to rival James Bond and Mission: Impossible? The new film is two hours and 49 minutes long, with a supporting cast that includes Donnie Yen and Bill Skarsgard, and a plot that takes Wick around the world. "We had an amazing location diversity… from Sacré Coeur, to Arc de Triomphe, to the Louvre, to the Eiffel Tower," Chad Stahelski, the director, told Vinnie Mancuso at Collider. "I mean we were in Aqaba, Jordan for our opening sequence. Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Osaka. We got around on this one." On general release from 22 March (Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) (Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) 5. Creed III In the third film in the post-Rocky boxing series, Adonis "Donnie" Creed gets in the ring with an estranged old friend played by the formidable Jonathan Majors, who was the best thing about the recent Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. This is the first Creed film to be directed by its star, Michael B Jordan – but the biggest change is that the franchise's creator, Sylvester Stallone, won't appear as Rocky Balboa, having fallen out with its producer, Irwin Winkler. "We wouldn't have Donnie without Rocky, and he will always be a pillar in Donnie's life," Jordan told Matt Maytum at Total Film, "but Creed III is really the dawn of a new era for the franchise and the character. It was really important from a storytelling perspective to get to a pivotal point in Donnie's career a few years down the line where he has really established himself with his professional career and his family." On general release from 3 March (Credit: Neon) (Credit: Neon) 6. Infinity Pool The latest body-horror chiller from Brandon "son of David" Cronenberg stars Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd as an author who kills someone in a car crash while he's on holiday in a tropical resort. The local government sentences him to death – unless, that is, he pays to create a cloned duplicate who will be executed in his place. Last year's Glass Onion, The Menu and Triangle of Sadness had the super-rich getting their comeuppance in island getaways, but Cronenberg's film, says Kristy Puchko at Mashable, is darker and more twisted than any of them. "Infinity Pool will make you squirm, but without the release of a climactic punchline. Instead, this satire of wealth and privilege will leave you stranded in its putrid muck, but perhaps smiling at the sheer gall of its horror." Released on 24 March in the UK, Norway and Sweden (Credit: Sony Pictures) (Credit: Sony Pictures) 7. 65 Bryan Woods and Scott Beck wrote the screenplay for A Quiet Place, so they're past masters at nifty man-vs-monster survival thrillers. Their new film, which they directed as well as scripted, stars Adam Driver as an astronaut who crashlands on what seems at first to be a distant planet, but turns out to be Earth, 65 million years ago. He and the crash's only other survivor (Ariana Greenblatt) have to trek through the primeval wilderness, but various hungry dinosaurs soon pick up their scent. Jurassic Park meets Predator, then? Or is 65 more original than that? "In the last 10 years, the theatrical landscape has become this place where almost every other movie is a sequel, remake or reboot," Woods told Chris St Lawrence at Discussing Film. "But the hope for this movie is that there's an air of mystery about it. And hopefully it's a little different than people are getting when they show up to the movies more often than not." On general release from 10 March (Credit: Netflix) (Credit: Netflix) 8. Money Shot: The Pornhub Story Pornhub was recently ranked as the 12th most visited website in the world. Since its launch in 2007, it has become synonymous with pornography on the internet, and with "user-generated" pornography in particular. But there have been numerous reports of videos of child abuse and other forms of nonconsensual sex on the site. A new documentary from Alex Gibney's Jigsaw Productions explores Pornhub's complicated history. Money Shot "requires us to grapple with what sexuality and consent means when billion-dollar internet platforms thrive on user-generated content," says its director, Suzanne Hillinger. "Who has, and who should have, the power in these environments? Our hope is that this film generates important conversations about sex and consent, both on the internet and out in the world." Released on 15 March on Netflix (Credit: Focus Features) (Credit: Focus Features) 9. Inside Vasilis Katsoupis's provocative debut feature stars Willem Dafoe as Nemo, an art thief who is robbing a luxury New York penthouse. When he trips the high-tech alarm system, he expects security guards to come running. But something worse happens: security guards don't come running, and nor does anyone else. Instead, the faulty system locks Nemo in the apartment with no running water, and no way of communicating with the outside world. And the owner isn't due to return for weeks or even months. What good are all the apartment's priceless paintings and sculptures to Nemo now? "This would be a great role for any actor," says Pete Hammond at Deadline, "but Dafoe seems right on so many levels [in] … a psychological thriller about survival, an art film all about art and its meaning in our lives." Released on 15 March in Belgium and 17 March in the US (Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) (Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) 10. A Good Person Almost 20 years on from Garden State, Zach Braff's debut as a writer-director, the former Scrubs star has made A Good Person, another indie comedy drama inspired by his own life and his own hometown in New Jersey. "I think both A Good Person and Garden State are authentically me in different times of my life," he told Nadia Khomami in The Guardian. Florence Pugh (Braff's ex-girlfriend) plays Allison, a successful and happily engaged young woman. But after she is in a car accident that kills her prospective sister-in-law, she plunges into alcoholism and substance abuse. Could her salvation be her friendship with Daniel (Morgan Freeman), a widowed Vietnam veteran who would have been her father-in-law? "I wanted to write about grief and how people stand up after grief," said Braff. "I wanted to write something that would feel universal, so it wasn't necessarily about a horrific car accident, but rather about the audience's personal low point in their own lives." Released on 24 March in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada (Credit: A24) (Credit: A24) 11. Close Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are as close as brothers, if not closer. They spend every moment together in idyllic rural Belgium, and can't imagine life being any different. But at the age of 13, the boys enroll in a new school where their casual intimacy prompts questions and rumours that could push them apart. This sensitive peer-pressure drama from Lukas Dhont (Girl) is a "beautiful elegy of lost innocence," says Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. "Delicately tracing the emotionally deadening but invisible frameworks of conformity that are imposed on young people in their most formative years, it's a quiet tragedy that's rendered close to uplifting by its gentle grace and compassion." Released on 3 March in the UK, Ireland, Finland and Taiwan, and on 17 March in Sweden Although Everything Everywhere is absurdist and weird, underlying that are real and universal emotions (Credit: Alamy) Of course, nothing is certain at the Oscars, especially because the best picture winner is decided by a ranked ballot, with voters listing first, second and third choices. If no film has 50% of first-place votes, the count continues. (It's so complicated the Academy has posted an explainer video.) There's a case to be made that people who favour more conventional narratives might not rank EEAAO very high, allowing another strong film like The Banshees of Inisherin to take the lead. The movie with a black hole bagel might be too much for some of them. But maybe not. At the end of the film, in an eloquent scene in the parking lot outside the Wangs' laundry, Joy insists that she and her mother might as well part ways, but Evelyn refuses, telling her daughter that she chooses to be with her in this universe or any other. "I will always, always, want to be here with you," she says. As in life, it is not a statement of total understanding, but of unbreakable, eternal love. That emotion is far from cynicism or the sappiness of so many Hollywood hits. And, ironically, that genuine, un-Hollywood feeling is why Everything Everywhere All at Once could be the Oscar voters' favourite. The consequences of this Biden blunder could soon be deadly for US citizens. The evidence was caught [right here]( on video, but I must warn you… This Biden mistake could make you very angry. [>> Go here now to see the controversial video]( Regards, Matt Insley, Publisher, Paradigm Press P.S. 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