The immersive theatrical experience, which sees your seat move, shake and often spray water, has seen a record summer During this long, hot, languishing summer, I have come to believe in one thing and one thing only: seeing Twisters in 4DX. The Oklahoma-set film, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, is about a 7/10 movie in 2D – a blockbuster sequel of sorts to the 1996 disaster flick, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as tornado chasers with modest chemistry. But in the immersive theatrical format known as 4DX, in which viewers are buffeted with literal wind and rain, Twisters becomes an unmissable 10/10 experience. In 4DX, you feel every bump and jolt of a truck in an F5 gale, thanks to moving seats that, among other things, punch you in the back and tickle your ankles. When the characters clung to bolted theater seats during a final climactic storm, I too clung to my armrest, lest I get rattled off my wind-ripped chair. Each of the film’s tornado encounters drew loud cheers at my screening, as did the shot of Powell in a tight white T-shirt during a palpable drizzle. I emerged from Twisters with tangled hair and horizontal tear streaks; my friend lost her shoe. In 4DX, you do not just, in the words of Powell’s Tyler Owens, “ride” the storm. You are the storm. Continue reading...

The future is here, whether some like it or not, and artificial intelligence is already impacting the film industry. But just how far can, and should, it go? Last year, Rachel Antell, an archival producer for documentary films, started noticing AI-generated images mixed in with authentic photos. There are always holes or limitations in an archive; in one case, film-makers got around a shortage of images for a barely photographed 19th-century woman by using AI to generate what looked like old photos. Which brought up the question: should they? And if they did, what sort of transparency is required? The capability and availability of generative AI – the type that can produce text, images and video – have changed so rapidly, and the conversations around it have been so fraught, that film-makers’ ability to use it far outpaces any consensus on how. “We realized it was kind of the wild west, and film-makers without any mal-intent were getting themselves into situations where they could be misleading to an audience,” said Antell. “And we thought, what’s needed here is some real guidance.” Continue reading...