Derek Malcolm has been covering the worlds of tech and entertainment for more than two decades.
Before coming to How-To Geek in 2025, Derek was a contributing editor and writer for the A/V and Home Theater section at Digital Trends, where he wrangled and wrote everything from what to watch on Netflix to reviews, explainers, and guides on the latest Bluetooth speakers, turntables, projectors, and other A/V gear.
Based in Toronto, Derek graduated from Humber College's Journalism program in 1999, after which he started covering the worlds of music, movies, TV, and celebrity for publications such as TV Guide, Hello! magazine, and Inside Entertainment. He then got the bug for covering tech and gadgets in 2006, when he served as editor-in-chief of Canadian tech magazine Connected for more than a decade.
An avid skier, when all the snow's gone Derek can be found at home spinning vinyl with his daughter or cheering on his favorite F1 team, McLaren.
This week, four of those arrivals should easily make your movie queue—an animated brick-building smash, a terrifying Oscar-sweeping space thriller, the sharpest mockumentary ever put on a leash, and my top pick this week, a big-screen concert event from a real "bad guy."
Second only to Frozen, The Lego Movie played nonstop in my house, car, on camping trips, and in waiting rooms when it hit the streaming services in 2015. My four-year-old didn’t care that it was snubbed for the best animated movie at the Oscars (to Big Hero 6?!); she absolutely couldn't stop singing Everything is Awesome, though, which did get a Best Original Song nod.
If you haven’t watched it 10,000 times like us, The Lego Movie is all about Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), a cheerfully ordinary construction minifigure who always follows the instructions, until he gets mistaken for the "Special," a prophesied MasterBuilder destined to save the Lego universe. Alongside fierce rebel Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), self-obsessed gravelly-voiced Batman (Will Arnett), and a slew of other classic Lego characters, the team must stop Lord Business (Will Ferrell) from permanently gluing the world together with the dreaded Kragle. It has a near-perfect 96% score on RT.
While it might not have had the enormous record-breaking box-office weekend that Spider-Man: Brand New Day just had, 2013's Gravity, with its mind-boggling special effects, sound, music, and cinematography, just blew people away in theaters (it was in IMAX, too), leading it to sweep up seven Oscars.
Can you identify these Academy Award-winning Paramount Pictures films from
the last 30 years using only clues?
This 1994 Paramount film follows a slow-witted but kind-hearted man from Alabama who
unknowingly influences several decades of American history, and it won Best Picture at the 67th
Academy Awards.
This 1997 Paramount epic romance is set aboard a doomed luxury ocean liner on its
maiden voyage, and it became the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide while winning 11
Academy Awards.
This 2013 Paramount film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor depicts a free Black man living
in New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South, winning Best Picture at
the 86th Academy Awards.
This 1995 Paramount thriller features a detective played by Morgan Freeman and his
younger partner played by Brad Pitt investigating a series of gruesome murders based on the seven
deadly sins — it won the Oscar for Best Film Editing.
This 2014 Paramount film tells the true story of a NASA mathematician and her
colleagues who played a crucial role in early American space missions, and it won the Oscar for Best
Adapted Screenplay.
This 2019 Paramount biographical drama follows a legendary rock band's frontman
through his flamboyant rise to fame and personal struggles, and Rami Malek won Best Actor for his
transformative lead performance.
This 2007 Paramount Western thriller adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel features a
relentless assassin hunting down a man who stumbled upon drug money, and it won four Academy Awards
including Best Picture.
This 2022 Paramount sequel starring Tom Cruise returns to the world of elite naval
aviators over 35 years after its predecessor, and it won the Oscar for Best Sound while becoming one
of the highest-grossing films of that year.
It's a nightmarish worst-case scenario for an astronaut. Dr. Ryan Stone (Best Actress nominee Sandra Bullock), a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, is floating above the Earth, mid-spacewalk, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), when debris from a satellite completely destroys their shuttle. Stranded 372 miles up with oxygen running out and Houston gone silent, Stone struggles to find a way to survive in the destroyed space station and somehow make it back to Earth. Gravity crams more white-knuckle tension into 91 minutes than most franchises manage in a decade. You will not regret watching this one.