Nicolas Winding Refn: ‘Cinema is dead. And now it is resurrected’

The maverick director says he has seen the future of the movies – and it’s in the ‘inspirational’ streaming website that he has devised

Why are memes of black people reacting so popular online?

The trend for ‘digital blackface’ – from the Fleetwood Mac marching band to unimpressed Viola Davis – is more problematic than you think

Tau review – Gary Oldman is an evil Alexa in another Netflix sci-fi disaster

The recent Oscar winner lends his voice to a moronic thriller about a woman trapped by artificial intelligence, which sits alongside other genre missteps on the streaming platform

Being human: how realistic do we want robots to be?

With Google’s AI assistant able to make phone calls and androids populating households in games and films, the line between machine and man is getting scarily blurred

Virtual truth: face to face with immersive documentaries

Experience life after a horrific accident, play a customs officer or swim with sea otters. A new breed of VR film-making is making viewers engage in a deeper way with the issues they confront

Teleportation: will it ever be a possibility?

Instant travel seems further away than when Captain Kirk first reanimated, but scientists are fighting to make it happen

How 3D printers became Hollywood’s favorite gimmick

Ocean’s 8 and Hotel Artemis are the latest films to use far-fetched technology to progress plots

Why are (some) Star Wars fans so toxic?

Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose, has received a torrent of online abuse and quit Instagram. Is the worst thing about Star Wars other Star Wars fans?

Kill the tech bro, save the world: how CEOs became Hollywood’s new supervillains

Upgrade, a new thriller set in a Tesla-like dystopia, is the latest big-budget film to replace the stereotypical evil Russian with the evil Silicon Valley nerd

Holograms: are they still the preserve of science fiction?

A projected Princess Leia in Star Wars suggested a 3D future, but we’ll have to wait a while before we are playing holochess

Celebrity species: from the DiCaprio water beetle to Obama spiders

Forget the awards and acclaim – nothing says you’ve hit the big time like having a creature named after you

Will Choose Your Own Adventure work on the big screen?

Fox will bring the book series to life with an in-cinema app that allows audience members to dictate the direction, an innovation that could lead to disaster