Long before Hollywood acknowledged queer identity, addiction, and sexual freedom, Pepi Lederer lived dangerously and restlessly at the center of one of its most glamorous and scandalous circles. Beautiful, reckless, and charismatic but emotionally adrift, Pepi moved through the lavish world of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst like a bright flame—driven, searching, and ultimately self-destructive. Her short life brimmed with privilege, wild parties, forbidden romances, painful addiction, and tragedy, ending in a shocking suicide that sent tremors through the Hearst empire in 1935.

Some actors always seem just out of reach, not quite forgotten but caught between major fame and cult status. Steve Cochran spent years in that middle ground. If you bring up his name to casual movie fans, they might not know it, but classic film lovers instantly picture his dark eyes, sly grin, broad shoulders, and the dangerous energy that made him one of Hollywood’s most convincing villains in the late 1940s and 1950s. He looked like trouble, and by most accounts, he often was.

There are certain actors I will watch in almost anything. Allison Janney is one of them. Frankly, I would watch her read the proverbial phone book and probably come away entertained. She possesses that increasingly rare quality among actors: the ability to make even ordinary dialogue sound like something worth listening to. Fortunately, Miss You, Love You, HBO/Max's intimate new drama written and directed by Jim Rash, gives her far more to work with than a phone book. It gives her grief, anger, regret, loneliness, and a mountain of dialogue, and Janney makes every moment count.

Hollywood has long been interested in politics, but sometimes the roles are reversed. Every so often, a performer leaves the stage to try something even harder than entertaining: leading a community. Sometimes, these efforts work out well. Other times, they show that being popular and being a good leader are not always the same.

In every era, Hollywood has had someone who claims to know all its secrets. Not actual bodies, but the hidden truths that shaped the industry. Secrets built careers, held marriages together, and cost studios a lot to keep quiet. For decades, the biggest secret was that classic Hollywood was much more sexually diverse and complex than the public ever realized.

The first weekend of June brings a surprisingly diverse lineup to movie theaters, offering audiences everything from sword-and-sorcery spectacle and horror-comedy nostalgia to heartfelt musical drama and thought-provoking thrillers. Whether you're looking for a summer blockbuster, a laugh-filled escape, or something a little more offbeat, this week's releases provide a variety of options for moviegoers eager to beat the heat and settle into a theater seat.

If Louis B. Mayer built the MGM dream factory, Adrian was the one who decided how it looked. More than any actor, director, or producer, Adrian shaped Hollywood glamour during its Golden Age. The broad-shouldered Joan Crawford look, Greta Garbo's sharp elegance, Jean Harlow's smooth sophistication, Katharine Hepburn's tailored style, and even Dorothy's ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz all came from the mind of one man: Gilbert Adrian Greenburg, known simply as Adrian. For over a decade, his credit, "Gowns by Adrian," became as familiar to moviegoers as the stars themselves. Still, Adrian's story is also one of many queer stories that were visible in Hollywood but rarely spoken about openly.

June is Gay Pride Month, so social media fills up with rainbow banners, old studio photos, and claims that almost every glamorous star from Hollywood’s golden age was “secretly queer.” Some of these stories are true, some are wishful thinking, and some miss the real reasons why certain classic stars became gay icons.

Today, on June 1, 2026, people around the world will remember the 100th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's birth. Even a hundred years after Norma Jeane Baker was born in a charity ward at Los Angeles County Hospital, her face is still one of the most famous in history. Anniversaries like this encourage us to look past the myths and see the real person. Before she became Marilyn Monroe, the movie star and cultural icon, she was a vulnerable girl facing a childhood filled with instability, foster homes, absent parents, and time at the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society. To truly understand the woman who fascinated the world, we need to look back at the child she once was.

Some true-crime documentaries fascinate viewers, while others leave them unsettled. Netflix's The Crash is definitely in the latter group. Directed by Gareth Johnson, this 94-minute film looks back at one of the most shocking criminal cases in recent years: the 2022 deaths of Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. Both were killed when seventeen-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla crashed her Toyota Camry into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio, at almost 100 miles per hour. At first, it seemed like a tragic accident, but investigators soon found something more disturbing. There was no sign that Shirilla tried to brake before the crash. She was later convicted of murder and aggravated vehicular homicide, receiving two concurrent prison sentences of fifteen years to life.

Karie Bible did not come to Hollywood Forever Cemetery looking for a job. She came looking for history—and found a calling. Long before she ever guided her first tour, her life had already been shaped by a love of the past. “I fell in love with the Universal horror movies of the 1930s,” she says, calling them her “gateway drug to film history.” At the same time, her parents’ fascination with the Civil War meant childhood trips to cemeteries and battlefields, places where stories lingered in the ground itself. “I’ve always loved living history and film history,” she explains.

After several weeks dominated by franchise spectacles and familiar studio formulas, this weekend’s new releases offer a somewhat stranger mixture of choices for moviegoers. Horror fans are being courted with surreal nightmare imagery, history lovers are getting a tense wartime drama, families have a broad comedy alternative, and Star Wars loyalists still have another chance to revisit a galaxy far, far away on the big screen. Whether audiences are looking for psychological dread, historical suspense, or simple escapism, theaters are offering an eclectic lineup heading into the final weekend of May.