Tron: Ares
Friday, October 10, 2025
Tron: Ares features a simplistic plot with underwhelming action and characters, failing to live up to its predecessors while lacking memorable elements.
Longform Reviews & Essays
Thomas Harris: Red Dragon
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Media has made killers cute. We've given them sardonic voice overs in TV shows. Some have become "I can fix them" characters in books. They'll kill only the bad people, or so the authors would have us believe. That's not how these people work. The reality is that everyone around a serial killer will be in some way damaged or destroyed by them. Other people's pain is their point. Red Dragon, written in 1981, doesn't do cute.
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
When Dante wrote this narrative poem he did so in Italian instead of Latin to make it as accessible as possible. Alas, I can't read 14th century Italian so I have to depend on translators and their copious amount of footnotes. Over the past 700 years the footnotes have piled up at the bottom of the page like centuries of snow. Dante would be horrified. Ignoring the opinions of academics and slogging my way through the translated poem, this is a groundbreaking piece of creativity.
The Naked Gun (2025)
Saturday, August 2, 2025
In 1996, Liam Neeson starred in the historical drama Michael Collins; likewise, Pamela Anderson was in Barb Wire. If you had told me at the time that they’d reboot The Naked Gun franchise together, I’d have laughed at you. In this reboot of a franchise that first started in 1982 with the six-episode Police Squad!, Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. takes on Danny Heuston’s reverse effective altruist green technology billionaire. Anderson’s crime writer has a family connection and a score to settle, which brings her into Drebin’s life.
Superman (2025)
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Superman (2025) isn't a movie by someone who studied Richard Donner's Superman. It's a movie by someone who studied Christopher Reeve's performance in Superman. David Corenswet gives Clark Kent/Superman a Reeve's like charisma even though he falls short of giving his Superman a Reeve's like presence. The cast here outstrips the dialogue. Unlike prior Superman movies everyone can act. Rachel Brosnahan is a modern update to Hildy Johnson's fast talking 1940s reporter in His Girl Friday.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Monday, June 2, 2025
The Devil’s Candy doesn’t need a review. People set out with the best intentions and a lot of money. They made an unloved movie from a popular novel. That’s it. But I’ll mention that Melanie Griffith puts in a better performance in film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities than Tom Hanks or Bruce Willis. Needy and damaged in the book, but dynamite on the screen. Tom Wolfe despised the characters he wrote about in his novel.
The Phoenician Scheme
Friday, May 30, 2025
A stronger entry than Asteroid City, but it’s smaller scale than The French Dispatch. It’s a three-hander film where the interplay of three characters drives the narrative. Benicio del Toro gives a charismatic performance as magnate Zsa-Zsa Korda. A shrewd entrepreneur of strategic foresight who is amoral. But he’s a striver, and he’s so likeable that even enemies who want to see him dead can’t help but like him. Liesl, Korda’s 21-year-old estranged daughter played by Mia Threapleton is the morality absent in the Korva genes.
When The Going Was Good by Graydon Carter
Friday, May 30, 2025
I finished reading Graydon Carter’s memoir “When The Going Was Good” last weekend. Committed to getting the most value out of the least amount of personal effort, he succeeded. Carter’s lazy ambition is impressive. I couldn’t guess to how many hours of the week he spent eating at some work related event. The man’s social battery appears endless. The book, true to its title, recounts the magazine industry’s fall from influence and subscribers.
Until Dawn
Friday, May 30, 2025
Horror movies done well are cheap to make, pack in viewers and make much more money than they cost. The good ones leave an impression. Neither "Death of a Unicorn" nor "Drop" left enough of an impression for me to write a review but Until Dawn is different because it doesn't try to adapt the source material. It does its utmost to ignore as much of the source material as possible.
The Monkey
Friday, May 30, 2025
This movie is a surreal and absurd look at death. Deaths so terrible that sometimes you can only laugh. It doesn’t make you uncomfortable, nor does it look to hit you with jump scares. It’s a typical cursed MacGuffin movie that knows its to be laughed at no matter how high the body count gets. Yes, the clock work driven, drum playing, malevolent looking toy monkey of the title is evil.
The Gorge
Friday, May 30, 2025
Two charismatic leads can carry a lot. Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller are two charismatic leads and the burden they carry is the flimsy story of this movie. There is a mist filled gorge somewhere where two concrete observation towers face each other from opposing sides. Opposed geographically and politically. Each tower has a top tier shooter responsible for maintenance of the automated defences preventing what is in the gorge from escaping.
The Last Dangerous Visions. Edited By Harlan Ellison.
Friday, May 30, 2025
By the time I had read Harlan Ellison’s work, his talent had deserted him. A lifelong career isn’t guaranteed, but watching one’s career fade must be a terrifying, waking nightmare. The Last Dangerous Visions, the irrevocable part of a once ground breaking trilogy of short story collections, explains why the talent evaporated and for those 60 pages it’s worth the read. In this book, I found two interesting pieces under glass in a museum of the mediocre.
Wolf Man
Friday, May 30, 2025
Vampires one week, werewolves the next. Unlike the highly cinematic Nosferatu, Wolf Man is merely a good-looking streaming movie. It could be psychological scarring from Covid, but monstrosity because of disease has taken root in the mind of horror writers. In fiction, lycanthropy has been everything from a pact with the devil to a supernatural curse, but here we return to the idea of it as an illness. This is a movie where the werewolf is neither calculating nor 8 feet tall on two legs with a great coat of computer generated hair.
Nosferatu
Friday, May 30, 2025
There’s a silver undertone to this movie that reminds me of vintage black & white film stock. But then everything about this movie is looking to remind you of something vintage. Once again, a couple opposes a personification of evil. A misshapen, diseased creature of catastrophic power. Of the other times I’ve seen Nosferatu told on screen, this couple is the best looking. Genetic super lottery winners, who I’m sure have real people's problems, but the only problem we are concerned about here is the murderous Count Orlok.
The Godfather Part II (4K UHD)
Friday, May 30, 2025
If you want to tell a good story about a man, show him fail. He can recover but there needs to be a journey into darkness. Part II of the Godfather trilogy is Michael Corleone’s journey into darkness. By the end of the movie he’s lost his wife, his mother, the trust of his adopted brother and his last brother by blood. His enemies are dead by their own hand or by his.
Secret Level: Episodes 1 to 8.
Friday, May 30, 2025
While lacking a 6’ tall sword wielding heroine in boob armour riding on a flying reptile, Secret Level still gives off Heavy Metal movie vibes. This is a character driven show that has to hook you fast. Some episodes are less than 15 minutes long. Stories with famous actors get a bit more time, but you’ll know if you’re in or out in the first three minutes. The quality of the anthology stories in the first 8 episodes ranges from “this is a series pitch” to “this is a cut scene” to “could you give us another 90 minutes of this story, please?
Like a Dragon: Yakuza. Episodes 1 to 3
Friday, May 30, 2025
Are “honourable criminals” lying to themselves? Is servitude worse than death? Less a criminal drama and more a criminal soap opera Prime Video’s Yakuza has thoughts on these questions. Focusing on four orphans, two male and two female, on the cusp of leaving their orphanage the four protagonists here walk themselves into a nightmare of a heist gone awry. Gangsters who come looking for stolen money don’t shut up. The assassins who will kill them at their leader’s whim don’t talk.
Megalopolis
Friday, May 30, 2025
I commend Francis Ford Coppola for taking an idea he wanted to do for 40 years, putting his money into it and bringing it to the screen. But this is an experimental movie overstuffed with his fancies which does not resonate with an audience. He brought it to life through his will, but he is the intended audience. It may not matter to him if no one else watches it.
Joker: Folie à Deux
Friday, May 30, 2025
This doesn't work as a musical or a villain movie but it held my attention for most of its running time. The massive flaw in the production is that it's not supposed to be this horrific a musical. The wasted life is a goldmine for an operatic performance. That's what Arthur Fleck's (Joaquin Phoenix) life is. A grinding misery that gets more miserable in increments. Every day the sun rises life takes a razor blade to Arthur's soul and shaves off another thin slice.
The Substance
Friday, May 30, 2025
The Substance About 25 minutes into The Substance we're introduced to Sue. A younger version of Demi Moore's network television fitness goddess. It's a writhing in pain, blood-stained introduction. I sat there in the dark and thought to myself, "The third act is going to be wild." It was. Because this is a movie of ludicrous escalation. Sue (Margaret Qualley) is so refreshing she's the condensation on the Coca-Cola can. Her firm buttocks enter the shot several times before she does.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Friday, May 30, 2025
A female-centric movie for the Wednesday Addams audience, this film is overstuffed and unfocused. The team seem afraid of never getting another shot at this. So, they crammed as many plot ideas as they could into the running time. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t. The Deetz women are not having an easy time of it. Lydia (Ryder) has grown from a flourishing teenage goth girl into a timid celebrity medium.
Terminator Zero
Friday, May 30, 2025
Terminator Zero Few sci-fi franchises are as limited as The Terminator. It’s not like it has anything novel to say about AI or humanity's hubris. Humans unknowingly reach the pinnacle of their culture and creativity. They are then sent back to scrambling in the dirt for survival after that culture and creativity burns in nuclear fire. This is in every Terminator movie and this anime series. The wrinkle the producers of this show introduce is the rhetorical appeal to another artificial life form to act on humanity’s behalf against Skynet.
The Rings of Power: Season 2, Episodes 1 to 3
Friday, May 30, 2025
Is it better than season 1? Yes. Will it bring back the audience it lost after its meandering first season? No. The superchat farmers on YouTube say nothing has changed. But there are improvements. The issue is that this show’s story arc is set and has to build on the dull foundation of season 1. You are into it or you are not. Any adaptation is not going to be the source material.
The Crow. (2024)
Friday, May 30, 2025
This movie is cinematic depression. Not that it makes the viewer feel hopeless, worthless and low in energy. But what the audience watches is a hopeless, worthless and low energy movie. Putting aside Brandon Lee's ability to stir..feelings..in generations of teenage Goth girls who have discovered the 1994 movie every week since it came out, The Crow as a media property has a simple formula. It is a tale of vengeance, redemption and the supernatural told in a style that drips with atmosphere.
Alien Romulus
Friday, May 30, 2025
I liked it. This is a well-made popcorn horror movie. It is not interested in big ideas. It's about tension. Alien was a movie about skilled labour in a claustrophobic jump scare-filled small space with a monster. Aliens brings in corporatism, adds a larger space and more monsters. Prometheus is about the elite, their ideas and what it means to not be one of them in David's case. Set between Alien and Aliens, Alien Romulus is about the working poor and their life that is already horrific.
Borderlands
Friday, May 30, 2025
It isn't that this movie is terrible, it's that it gets boring. The Borderlands series is darkly irreverent. It's gory in a visceral "ewwwhhh" and laugh way. It's funny in a "well this will hurt" way. The movie has none of that. It's Borderlands with the life rung out of it. Yes it has the colourful character design, eater eggs and the 1080p CGI makes Pandora look like the dusty trash pile it is.
Time Bandits
Friday, May 30, 2025
An unfortunate miss. It looks too sharp in that Doctor Who/British children's TV way. The cast doesn't gel and it lacks the dark undertones of the original movie. The absence of delight and absurdity in humour drags the production down. Some of the jokes land. But this is a show about burglars with a cosmic map of time and space on the run from order and chaos. The ambition on screen here isn't enough.
Batman Caped Crusader: Season 1
Friday, May 30, 2025
Bruce Timm's Batman Caped Crusader is an iteration on the Dark Deco style of his work on Batman: The Animated Series. This like that show has a villain/monster of the week format but unlike that show Gotham itself is not a character. Bruce Wayne is good, but Hamish Linklater hasn't found Batman's menace yet. The villains are..okay. I enjoyed the Boris Karloff spin on Clayface. Christina Ricci's Catwoman is an entertaining spend-thrift kleptomaniac.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Friday, May 30, 2025
Better than the ill thought out slop Marvel has been releasing but not close to the heights of the finest entries. There is no story to spoil and the villain is underwhelming. The only spoilers you need to beware of are cameos and pop culture jokes. This is a fan service movie on steroids for long-time fans. It builds on Deadpool 2's finale and then tucks itself into the Disney+ era of Marvel.
Twisters
Friday, May 30, 2025
The good news is dumb big budget disaster movies are back. The bad news is the same as the good news. Twisters has a lot in common with the 1996 original. The plot is nonsense, the characters are paper thin and you'll never think about the movie again after seeing it. Unlike the Jan de Bont movie with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton the leads here have no chemistry. Something I put on Daisy-Edgar Jones as Glen Powell had chemistry with several co-leads in past films.