The western and science fiction genres share several similar themes, particularly when the subject of the latter is exploration into the unknown, essentially transporting the frontier from the American West to the edges of outer space. It can be exciting and fascinating and introspective when done right. Unfortunately, writer and director Wyatt Rockefeller’s film “Settlers” […]
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. Black Widow is one of the most fascinating characters I personally started respecting after her ultimate sacrifice in The Avengers End Game. There’s something about her you can’t disregard. It’s not just her contagious charm or ability to convince the rest of the world why she deserves to be […]
Film Review: “Black Widow” (2021)
Never, ever mess with war Widows. Nearly a decade in the making and fourteen months in the releasing, the next chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is here at long last, two years after Spider-Man: Far From Home capped off Phase III in theaters. Fans had to content themselves with Marvel’s new above-average TV fare […]
Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Black Widow” End Credits
The crew of three dock with their starship to Mars, pop the hatch on their shiny, white, aluminum alloy and glass space ship and busy themselves with firing it up to make another trip to the Red Planet, and overcoming motion sickness. It’s a complex “cycler” craft, generating artificial gravity by tethering and rotating the […]
Netflixable? A “Stowaway” on a space ship? Who isn’t an Alien? Or a Predator?
A Quiet Place was perhaps the pinnacle of the sensory deprivation horror of the late 2010s – the last of a plethora of films that tried to reinvest the multiplex with a new sensory immediacy by focusing on characters who had one or many senses disabled. That movement didn’t necessarily feel exhausted by A Quiet […]
Krasinski: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
For some reason, I’m getting requests to review super-hero movies, even though it’s hardly an area of expertise. There are good ones, The Dark Night, Thor: Ragnorok, Iron Man 3. But most of them have a written-by-committee feel; David Mamet described a summer blockbuster movie as being like a themed ‘pageant’, and there’s generally little […]
Emmy-winning production designer Elisabeth Williams got more dynamic with location work, including an Ontario town standing in for the Chicago war zone.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 4: Recreating the Chicago War Zone in Episode 5
A deadly hiccup in space. So this is about a crew of three (Toni Collette, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim). They’re on a mission to Mars to research how to sustain life there, but there is a small problem: there is a fourth person aboard (Shamier Anderson), and there isn’t going to be enough oxygen […]
The Oxygen Quandary – Stowaway (2021)
Several months ago we got an incredible cool teaser for “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”, the follow-up to 2018’s critically panned but big box office success “Venom”. The film is part of the strange symbiotic (see what I did there) relationship between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. The Venom movies are not part of the […]
First Glance: “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”
Jupiter’s Legacy premieres May 7 on Netflix. By Chris Flanagan Superheroes and comic book adaptations are everywhere. And Netflix is no stranger to greenlighting known properties that have a proven track record with literary fans into marquee tent poles that are required bingeing from the streaming giant. The Umbrella Academy, The Old Guard, Lucifer, and […]
Jupiter’s Legacy: Season 1 – Review
Quick Thoughts about Episode One – Star Wars: The Bad Batch is a welcome addition to the Star Wars animated world, and is refreshingly unique as it follows Clone Force 99, a group of defectively born, and battle-hardened clones throughout the post-Clone Wars universe. The official synopsis for the show is “Members of a unique […]
Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Episode One Review
Just so you know where I’m coming from, Captain America has always been my favorite Marvel superhero and not just during his run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Long before Marvel Studios started raking in billions of dollars at the box office, I was enthusiastically following Captain America’s comic book adventures, both as the head […]
REVIEW: “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”
An exciting first trailer as dropped for the upcoming Netflix survival thriller “Oxygen”. It comes from director Alexandre Aja whose last movie was the surprisingly entertaining “Crawl”. You know, the one about a father and daughter trapped inside their flooded home by killer alligators during a Category 5 hurricane. On paper it sounded ludicrous. But […]
Some science-fiction junkies like me might be tempted to approach the new film “Voyagers” with a touch of caution. The movie’s first trailer showed off a fairly interesting premise and a cast rich with sparkling young talent. And then you have the description going around calling it “Lord of the Flies in space” which only […]
MY CALL: It may run a bit too long, but this remains a strong recommendation for fans of hard-R graphic violence in their Sci-Fi. Plus the action effects of these robots is excellent! MORE MOVIES LIKE Monsters of Man: For more smartly written Sci-Fi killer robots, go for Chappie (2015), Black Mirror S4 segment ‘Metalhead’ […]
Part of me wants to sit back and just enjoy Godzilla versus Kong, but the other part of me wants to really think about what it’s doing. First of all, it’s a fun movie. It’s entertaining. There’s action and drama and comedy and all the other crap you need to have a successful movie. The […]
The changing origins of Godzilla and Kong
After dropping the more familiar narrative constraints of its first season and delving into more unknown territory, Snowpiercer manages to form its own riveting path through the snow. Through this season, the narrative and characters are propelled into so many unexpected directions that it makes this season a much more surprising and engaging watch. Right […]
SNOWPIERCER Season 2 is elevated by edge-of-seat thrills and the phenomenal presence of Sean Bean!
Sometimes a movie’s title says it all. That’s definitely the case with “Godzilla vs. Kong”, the fourth film in Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse following two “Godzilla” movies and 2017’s “Kong: Skull Island”. It should go without saying, but you don’t enter into something called “Godzilla vs. Kong” with expectations of an emotionally layered and deeply nuanced […]
REVIEW: “Godzilla vs Kong” (2021)
Psycho Goreman (2020) Little Girl. Big Psycho. If you imagine a riff on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) but with the kindly alien botanist swapped out for a bloodthirsty intergalactic warlord who’d look right at home in a GWAR music video, you’re on the right track here. Written and directed by Steven Kostanski, The Void (2016), […]
In “Voyagers” Colin Farrell chaperones a group of young people specially engineered for obedience and intellect as they embark on a journey into deep space to colonize a far away planet. Sounds pretty familiar, right? Well this seemingly straightforward mission begins to unravel when the young voyagers discover the blue soda they’ve been drinking is […]
