The time has come once more for the film industry’s biggest night of self-congratulatory back-patting. Perhaps this year more than ever, I’m just not feeling it. The front-running movie felt preordained to win both the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars ever since the moment the nominations were announced, and quite honestly, I could not… Read More Obligatory Oscar Winners Announcement – 2024 Edition
In September 2023, two new non-fiction books were published to capitalize on what was originally intended to be the theatrical release of Denis Villeneuve’s mega-budget sequel Dune: Part Two. Unfortunately, that film’s launch date was postponed to early 2024, leaving both books stranded with no obvious thematic tie-in, except each other. I’ve previously reviewed A… Read More A Secret Report within the Guild | The Spice Must Flow (2023) Book Review
Far off, in a harsh desert landscape isolated from the centers of civilization, a small pocket of humanity struggles to claw out a meager existence from the unforgiving environment. As if not difficult enough on its own, that challenge is made nearly impossible by sudden attacks from monstrous sandworms burrowing beneath the ground right under… Read More Underground Goddamn Monsters! | Tremors (1990) Arrow Video 4K Ultra HD
The Netflix series House of Ninjas is a fun throwback to the ninja-sploitation craze of the video rental era, when most Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores had an entire section devoted to sword-wielding, kung-fu assassins who skulk around at night wearing footie pajamas and masks. Thankfully, in doing so, the show maintains a generally light… Read More Our Whole Family Is Normal | House of Ninjas Season 1 (2024) on Netflix
Released in early 1992, advertising for the crime thriller Deep Cover played up star Laurence Fishburne’s involvement in the previous summer’s breakout hit Boyz n the Hood and generally tried to connect the film to the run of other so-called ‘hood movies that had made waves during that period. Although it scored positive reviews from… Read More A Scumbag for the Right Side | Deep Cover (1992) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
If not quite as satisfying (to old-school Generation 1 fans like myself, at least) as the 2018 Bumblebee prequel movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts works well enough in broad terms to prove that the franchise remains better off without Michael Bay at the helm. Sadly, the film continued the series’ downward trajectory at the… Read More Going Primal | Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) 4K Ultra HD
Nearly twenty-three years after their seminal HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and thirteen since its follow-up The Pacific, producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks return once more to the battlegrounds of World War II to deliver the (presumed) finale to what turns out to be a very prolonged trilogy. Produced this time for Apple TV+… Read More Rack ’em Up and Knock ’em Down | Masters of the Air (2024) Apple TV+ Series Premiere
After more than a decade exploring other subjects and genres that interested him, filmmaker David Cronenberg returned to the so-called “body horror” cycle of his early career with the 1999 thriller eXistenZ. While the director himself has argued that this particular movie was more science-fiction than horror, the connective tissue (in multiple senses) with his… Read More Death to Realism | eXistenZ (1999) Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra HD
Looking at it clinically, the Amazon Prime film Role Play is essentially another made-for-TV knockoff of James Cameron’s 1994 blockbuster True Lies – as if we hadn’t already seen enough of those over the past year, both official and unofficial. Thankfully, this one has just enough of its own twists to be an enjoyable and… Read More Couple Goals | Role Play (2024) on Amazon Prime Video
The summer of 2023 may have belonged to Barbie, but the year also closed out with a very lovely tribute to her longtime rival from toy store shelves. Arriving in book form rather than a movie, The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is a gorgeous and exhaustively comprehensive chronicle of one of… Read More Relive the Adventure | The Art of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (2023) Book Review
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