Unlike the rest of my reviews for this season of Doctor Who, this review will contain spoilers for the episode. What marks this change is that Empire of Death is one of the worst finales of Doctor Who, and to efficiently discuss and critique the episode in a manner that …
This is perhaps my hottest Star Wars take: I think Rogue One is a bit overrated. I am by no means calling it bad, but this is a case where a lot of its issues become obfuscated by one excellent chunk of the film. However, that stretch of the film …
Some artists in cinema have a different aura attached to them. They are almost an entity. People whose work is remarkable for any reason mark their names in history. Composers have this power. It only takes a combination of notes in the due frames to join them for eternity. Maurice …
Based on the bestselling book by Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing rockets viewers back to 1972 Belfast with an explosive opening scene. The miniseries employs different framing devices to Keefe’s nonfiction tome, but both work to great effect. Widowed mother of ten Jean McConville (Judith Roddy) sends her eldest daughter …
Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy by a country mile. Where The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones felt narratively meandering, handicapped by their insistence on telling over showing, Revenge of the Sith takes much better advantage of writer-director George Lucas’s idiosyncrasies. …
After a botched limited theatrical release, Joachim Rønning’s Young Woman and the Sea is now available for all to view on Disney+. Strangely enough, the film never received any theatrical footprint in Canada, the next-door neighbor to the United States, and was announced as a ‘Disney+ Original’ when it made …
Good news everyone! Futurama is returned once again to satirize the future and the present, and it’s only slightly out of date doing it. There are a few things to say about the show, but let’s get this out of the way first: it’s still Futurama, and if you liked …
Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien was a tremendous achievement; A low-fi monolith of science-fiction horror that changed the landscape of film as we know it. From Ridley Scott’s lean and elegant direction to HR Giger’s phallic and genitalia-inspired character and set design, one which now feels fused into the very …
It’s a shame when one of your most anticipated films of the year winds up also being one of the biggest disappointments. Unfortunately, that was my experience with Alien: Romulus, the highly anticipated return to the horrors of space from Fede Álvarez. Álvarez has made a name for himself within …
Disney’s newest sports-inspiration film, Young Woman and the Sea, may not be the most artistic film ever made, but it knows what it’s supposed to be doing and does it well. Directed by Joachim Rønning, the biopic follows Trudy Ederle (Daisy Ridley), a New Yorker born in 1905, as she …
Four episodes into The Acolyte and it has attracted the worst kinds of hate for all the wrong reasons. Stupid nitpicking comments about fire in space, an ongoing series that hasn’t revealed its mystery, and now we have a flying Sith lord that people are mad about – if anything, it shows …
At the 2023 AFI Film Festival, I saw Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders and fell in love with it. After the festival, Searchlight sold the film to Focus Features, and it is in theaters as of June 21st. Heading into the movie a second time, I wondered if it would ignite …
Within Doctor Who, ‘two-parters’ have become commonplace, a trademark of 2005’s reboot series. Some are renowned for being fan-favorite episodes – The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – while some are a lot less beloved; see The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang. But while some don’t hit the heights of others as a …
The Acolyte episode three, Destiny, takes things back to the past and the childhood of Mae and Osha and looks at how the tragic incident that consumed their family and separated them, driving them apart – how it happened. It’s brutal; Mae’s rage and anger at Osha betraying their trust to …
Doctor Who: Rogue is the 6th episode of Season 1 with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor. The 2005 reboot of Doctor Who has always had a romantic streak.. Assuming we discount the 1996 TV movie with Paul McGann’s iteration of the Doctor, Russel T Davies adjusted the show to have …
Inside Out 2 is another home run from Pixar. It’s full of heart, honesty, and the stress-induced Anxiety of becoming a teenager. Almost nine years to the date, Pixar is releasing the follow-up to the 2015 smash hit Inside Out. Have you ever felt like your life is together as you prepare …
Some TV shows and films are part of our formative process as children. Those programs that mothers would put the TV on for their kids to watch while they have to do something else, but those media pieces worked almost as nannies for them. The most prominent example of this …
The Acolyte is the latest Star Wars show to arrive on the back of something of a mixed reception for the franchise of late, with underwhelming ventures for Ahsoka and the latest season of The Mandalorian, but with stellar outings for Andor. Thankfully, The Acolyte is more in the Andor …
Holding a mirror up to society is typical of science fiction. For the last decade or so, it’s been a little less common in Doctor Who, as the show has taken a less allegorical path, with episodes like Rosa, which tackled segregation with a literal Rosa Parks refusing to sit …
In May this year, streaming service Apple Music started listing the 100 best albums. The albums were judged by Apple Music’s team and a commission of invited producers, artists, and industry professionals. Shockingly, The Beach Boys’ 1966 Pet Sounds was considered the 20th best of all time, below newer albums. …