Disney’s sci-fi opus The Black Hole was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. At least, it’s the first movie I remember seeing in a theater. I was only five-years-old at the time, and looking back now, can’t imagine why my mother would have chosen to endure something like this with me. Nonetheless,… Read More 20 Billion Leagues in Outer Space – The Black Hole (1979)
Star Wars: Visions is a really great idea that, unfortunately, didn’t quite come together during its first season in 2021. Honestly, the first batch of episodes were mostly duds. Two years later, the series returns with an expanded focus that thankfully yields some improvement. The second season has a higher ratio of good, or at… Read More Follow the Light – Star Wars: Visions Season 2 (2023) on Disney+
Even for as contentious as Star Wars fandom can be, just about everybody seems to like The Mandalorian. While Disney’s other streaming series from the franchise have met with mixed to outright hostile reaction, most fans still eagerly awaited the return of beloved characters Mando and Grogu. Now that it’s back for a third season,… Read More Never Trust a Pirate – The Mandalorian Season 3 Premiere (2023) on Disney+
The latest in the never-ending cycle of Star Wars content being churned out on Disney+, the animated Clone Wars spin-off series The Bad Batch has returned for a second season. Released in mid-2021, the first season was decidedly underwhelming, to be honest. Whether this one will show any growth or improvement remains to be seen,… Read More More Clonin’ Around – Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 Premiere (2023) on Disney+
I seem to be out of step with both critical and popular opinion on Guillermo del Toro’s new stop-motion animated remake of Pinocchio. I watched that one without so much as checking Rotten Tomatoes or Letterboxd and thought it was kind of awful, only to find nearly everyone else in the world proclaiming it a… Read More No Strings on Me – Pinocchio (1940) Blu-ray
Produced 34 years after the original, Disney’s reboot of Willow is a fair bit better than the film that inspired it. That’s something of a relief, if not exactly much of an achievement. Improvement or not, the new Willow is still a dull, derivative, and uninteresting fantasy adventure. Not every old movie deserves nostalgia. As… Read More The Fellowship of the Underwhelming – Willow (2022) Disney+ Series Premiere
Back in the days when a proper live-action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings still seemed impossible, George Lucas (riding high off the success of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises) got together with Ron Howard (who’d done very well with Splash and Cocoon) to mount their own high-fantasy adventure copycatting the J.R.R.… Read More An Unexceptional Journey – Willow (1988)
Although LucasFilm’s animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars initially seemed to come to a close back in 2014 after six very successful seasons, it showed up again in 2020 for a bonus seventh season that felt like it finally brought the narrative to a conclusive end. Even after that, however, creator Dave Filoni is apparently… Read More Star Wars Odds & Ends – Tales of the Jedi Season 1 (2022) on Disney+
The latest Lucasfilm series to premiere on Disney+ streaming, Andor is easily the least Star Wars-y of any Star Wars project to date. It’s also the most mature and adult-oriented installment in the franchise’s history. This leaves me feeling very conflicted. On the one hand, as a middle-aged adult who still has interest in Star… Read More Going Rogue Again – Star Wars: Andor (2022) Disney+ Series Premiere
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