Released at the end of 2023, Zack Snyder’s would-be sci-fi epic Rebel Moon: Part One turned out to be such a non-event that I half-expected Netflix to quietly scuttle the sequel without making a fuss or drawing attention to it. Honestly, would anyone have even noticed if it simply never showed up when originally announced?… Read More Cut the Snyder Release | Rebel Moon: Part Two (2024) on Netflix
Considering how extensively the popular Fallout video game series satirizes American consumerist and media cultures, the fact that its inevitable live-action television adaptation would be produced by retail giant Amazon for distribution on its streaming service seems both fitting and more than a touch ironic. That the first season of the show would actually turn… Read More Don’t Lose Your Head | Fallout Season 1 (2024) on Amazon Prime Video
I’ve watched James Cameron’s Aliens countless times over the years. I own numerous copies of it across multiple home video formats. As far as I’m concerned, Aliens is a nearly perfect movie, as as a sequel or taken on its own. The film takes everything that was great about the original Alien, expands it in… Read More State of the Badass Art | Aliens (1986) 4K Ultra HD
James Cameron’s 1994 action blockbuster True Lies had been neglected for so long during the home video era that most fans gave up hope for a decent release of it years ago. Remarkably, after literal decades of unfulfilled rumors, what seemed impossible finally happened. Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment (via its current corporate distributor, Disney)… Read More You Do Not Have Time to Tango | True Lies (1994) 4K Ultra HD
The Netflix fantasy adventure film Damsel puts a modern feminist spin on some of the most traditionally sexist tropes of the fairy tale genre. That really shouldn’t be too controversial a thing to do, but because our real world is such a dumpster fire right now, probably will be. Some members of the viewing audience… Read More Distress Signals | Damsel (2024) on Netflix
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
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
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
Denied the opportunity to make an official Star Wars movie, director Zack Snyder tossed together his own knockoff space epic, complete with a remarkably similar story about a farmboyfarmgirl from a distant world who joins a rebel alliance to take down an evil galactic empire. In addition to other direct plot lifts and familiar recycled… Read More Seven Space Samurai | Rebel Moon: Part One (2023) on Netflix
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