Contributor: Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

The Watch

Ben Stiller and his band of comedic cohorts patrol their neighborhood on the lookout for any bad behavior. Maybe they should’ve just watched themselves in this movie.

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Movie Tuesday: The Dark Knight Rises

As promised, here’s a quick wrap of the weekend’s top money-earners. No bad puns this time around, though. 1. The Dark Knight Rises, $160.9 million (third-highest opening weekend of all time, behind The Avengers and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows …

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Living in Gotham

Out of respect for the people killed or injured during the theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., July 20, Warner Bros. (the company behind The Dark Knight Rises) and several other studios withheld box-office estimates this weekend. We’ll post figures when …

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

So Indy’s ‘Last Crusade’ really wasn’t. Nearly three decades after ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ he’s back battling baddies and trying to avoid snakes while hunting for lost treasure.

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A Dark Night

Early this morning, a shooter—allegedly 24-year-old James Holmes, according to police—opened fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. News reports are still flying in, but officials estimate that 12 people we …

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The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy ends by sinking its grappling hooks deep into matters of life and death and rebirth.

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Emmy Nominees: Rated TV-MA

Nominees for this year’s Emmy awards were released this morning, and many of the nominees have been showered with Emmy love many times before. AMC’s Mad Men—winner of the Outstanding Drama Emmy for each of its first four seasons— was nominated 17 times …

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Movie Monday: Ice Age Drifts to the Front

Wedged between two iconic superheroes, Manny made the most of it. The lumbering mammoth and his motley band of prehistoric pals pulled Ice Age: Continental Drift into the numero uno slot for the weekend with an estimated $46 million. OK, so the animate …

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Ben-Hur (2016)

All the betrayal and thirst for revenge, and all its brutality, ultimately help highlight the movie’s heartening message: that love and forgiveness have more power than a thundering horde of chariots.

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A Conversation With Mirror Mirror’s Lily Collins

Movies are, by definition, trendy. Filmmakers want to make movies that folks want to see—movies that’ll grab their attention and, hopefully, bring them back for more. They’ll tap into whatever they think we’re interested, be it good (yay, superheroes!) …

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Movie Monday: The Amazing Spider-Man

Fireworks? Barbecues? Baseball? Hey, they were all viable ways to celebrate Independence Day during this weirdly elongated holiday “weekend.” But it seems as though when folks weren’t shooing away flies from the potato salad or slapping mosquitos in th …

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Not All Heroes Crawl Walls

I woke up in my own home this morning. Incredible. Last Wednesday, I wasn’t sure I had one. It’s been a week since the Waldo Canyon Fire blew up around our neighborhood, threatening my house and thousands more in the Colorado Springs area. I missed the …

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The Amazing Spider-Man

Ten years after Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man was released and officially launched our current cinematic superhero craze, Marvel delivers a reboot that might just set your Spidey senses a-tingling.

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Movie Monday: Ted

Well, it was a good run. For 15 straight weeks, the No. 1 movies in North America had borne a PG-13 rating or lower—many of them which would even qualify as “family friendly.” Not since 21 Jump Street was bumped by The Hunger Games way back in March ha …

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Fathers: Not Just Comic Relief Anymore

Just got through watching ABC Family’s new sitcom Baby Daddy (watch for the review tomorrow), and really the only thing remarkable about the show was how unremarkable it was. Baby Daddy felt as though it had been transported straight out of network tel …

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