At this point, I probably don’t need to say that I like Luke Cage, but I’ll say it anyways: I like Luke Cage. But I do wonder if there’s a more perfect version of the series lurking within the very good version we must content ourselves with, one where the fear explored in both “DWYCK” and “Take … Continue reading
Much as I love Mahershala Ali, I’m kinda glad to see him go in the context of Luke Cage: He’s one villain too many, or the show just plain ol’ has one villain too many, and if one of ’em had to go, Cornell Stokes makes the most sense. (Don’t feel too bad for Ali: 2016 is … Continue reading
I’m not sure I altogether disliked Justin Kelly’s latest film, King Cobra; it’s a damn sight better than his last movie, 2015’s irredeemably awful I Am Michael, and it’s pretty decent on its own merits. But I couldn’t let go of the film’s flaws in my review for The Playlist: The film is just way too underdeveloped … Continue reading
If you’re going to make a movie and title it Creepy, well, it better be creepy, so good job Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Your latest film justifies its name. Creepy is an unnerving little ditty, “little” being a somewhat misleading qualifier based on duration – it’s two hours long plus some change, but you barely feel it based on … Continue reading
I’m starting to sound like a broken record with Brooklyn Nine-Nine – “Predictable! Predictable!” – and it’s not just in the show’s fourth season. “Predictable” is exactly how I described the show’s Halloween episode back in 2015, too! The thing is, predictable isn’t the same thing as bad, and so, just like with last year, predicting … Continue reading
So yeah: I really like Park Chan-wook movies, but if you know me, you know this. I like them so much, in fact, that I wrote a whole big darn list ranking his films by quality metrics for Birth. Movies. Death., and it’s pretty much 100% correct if I do say so myself. Cut sucks! I’m a … Continue reading
Drop everything: There’s a new Park Chan-wook movie in theaters. And when I say “drop everything,” I mean everything, because boy, The Handmaiden seriously wants to turn up your temperature. As I note in my review of the film, which you can read at Paste Magazine as long as you know how to click a mouse, the … Continue reading
Jack Goes Home is a really, really, really bad movie. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Rory Culkin is good. Nothing else to say than that. Spare me the pain of having to revisit my feelings about this damn thing and just go read my review at The Playlist.
The best part of “The Night Shift,” last week’s episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is that its crossover with New Girl didn’t totally sink it. It barely made a dent in it, in fact, but that’s because the crossover is minimal. (There’s more crossover in New Girl itself than in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, in point of fact.) But I still hated … Continue reading
The Accountant is Pixar’s latest family heart-warmer, a comedy about an ant who keeps the books for his colony and – wait, no. Sorry. That’s wrong. The Accountant is a movie where Ben Affleck plays an accountant who is on the autism spectrum, whose clients are mostly murderers and scumbags, and who shoots people in the fucking … Continue reading
So: Problems! Luke Cage hits kind of a standstill during its fifth and sixth episodes, mostly because it fails to appropriately pair its hero against a suitable villain. You can see how this is almost inevitable from the start: Stokes, a mortal man with a mean streak and delusions of Robin Hood-dom, uses bullets to get … Continue reading
Proof that Sarah Paulson is the best: She coaxes a great performance out of Mark Duplass in Blue Jay, this wonderful, itty bitty widdle indie moobie that you can rent or buy in iTunes. I think you should! I obviously liked it, judging by the review I wrote for Paste Magazine, and you know that that’s … Continue reading
Maybe you like anime. Maybe you don’t. Maybe if you do, you think of “anime” in myopic terms and consider anything that doesn’t feature robots or monsters or other weird shit “anime,” but that’s dopey as fuck because “anime” is a word of pretty broad meanings. Besides that, Miss Hokusai, this little ditty I reviewed for … Continue reading
I have no words to intro my review of Keith Maitland’s Tower for Paste Magazine, other than to express my shock that this movie is relevant in 2016 despite being about terrible shit that happened back in 1966.
Speaking of Swiss Army Man: I interviewed Daniels, AKA Daniel Scheinert & Dan Kwan, AKA the directors of the movie! I did this for The Playlist. I also would not classify this as an “interview” so much as “a half hour of me geeking out at these guys, who probably thought I was just super weird … Continue reading
I really liked Swiss Army Man, but I didn’t get a chance to write about it when it was running around in theaters back in June. So now that it’s out on Blu-ray, I figured, hey: I already have a free review copy of the film, why not put down some virtual ink on it? So … Continue reading
Here’s a tip: Instead of watching The Girl on the Train, go watch a better movie. Go watch a Brian de Palma movie. Go watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I would say “go watch Gone Girl,” but that’s too obvious, so how about don’t do that? It’s not that The Girl on the Train is bad; it’s that … Continue reading
And: Boom. It’s done. The Coral Palms arc is over, and we’re back to New York City. I’m not upset about that, per se, because it was inevitable, but I kinda wish we’d gotten to spend just a little more time down in sweaty stinky butt Florida, because that diversion was super fun. I’ll live. So … Continue reading
Every Luke Cage review I post, I wonder a little bit how many people read it who belong to that conglomerate of anti-Cagers. Are you a part of that group? How about yoooou? Well, if that’s where you’re at, then this post is just going to be a waste of your time, because it links to about a … Continue reading
Doing something a little different with this season of Ash vs Evil Dead: Instead of reviewing its individual episodes, I’m just going to highlight the best five moments from each one. Whatcha think about that? It doesn’t matter, really, because I’m doing it anyways, so nyah. But the piece I wrote is fun! It is fun. So you … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 