Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, music, and maybe even games.

Crossposted, Essays, Reviews

Terminator: Dark Fate

Hey! I finally got back out and saw a movie!

Nothing screams “I am not a real movie reviewer” quite like me not seeing movies. But some of you seem to like knowing what I think about the latest cinematic releases, and I’ve been letting you down. There just hasn’t been time.

There wasn’t time today, but I went and saw Terminator: Dark Fate anyway, and I have no regrets. It’s a perfect Terminator film, and while none of the reveals were surprising, none of them needed to be.  Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were perfect, and Mackenzie Davis¹ absolutely crushed it as the augmented soldier sent back in time to stop Gabriel Luna’s “Rev 9” Terminator. Luna was terrifying, and sure, he had help from the SFX department, but his robosociopath was easily on par with Robert Patrick’s, back when the franchise introduced us to liquid metal.

The film brought to mind an entire category of questions which are getting asked a lot lately:  what does the rise of the serialized franchise mean to traditional cinema? What do direct-to-streaming blockbusters mean for TV? What will all these streaming services do to my VHS² collection?

I don’t have any answers, but I do have a response. See, I remember seeing Star Wars in 1977, and thinking it would be AMAZING to have NINE WHOLE MOVIES telling a story, but I couldn’t possibly wait 27 years for the big finish. 10-year-old me would be pretty disappointed to learn that the central Star Wars saga would take more than 40 years to reach Episode IX, but that kid would shake off the funk when told that I’d get a 3-movie Lord of the Rings³, a 23-movie superhero epic which got told, start-to-finish⁴, in just 11 years, and that the nerdy, weird things I loved were appearing on so many different kinds of screens I wouldn’t be able to watch them all.

The Terminator films are not my favorite film franchise, but they’re pretty dang cool. They’re not be-all, end-all movies, but this latest one crossed my Threshold of Awesome. I’m pretty happy to have lived long enough to enjoy this latest era of cinematic output, and I look forward to enjoying as much of what comes next as I can make time for.

¹ Mackenzie Davis played my favorite character in The Martian. She was the one who figured out that Mark Watney was still alive. It was a small part⁵, but her performance still makes me tear up a little. 
² Ha-ha I kid. I live in the future. I need a way to rip my entire blu-ray collection onto my FitBit.
³ I read LoTR in 5th grade. If any single road can be given credit for leading me out of The Shire it was that one, which my Dad put my feet upon by handing me a book. 
⁴ I know, I know, the MCU hasn’t actually wrapped, but Endgame was a good enough ending that I’d be willing to let it end there. 
⁵ The old saw about “there are no small parts” does a disservice to those scenes where an actor must carry the entire weight of the story for their few moments on screen, and where most it has to be carried without using words. Actors are amazing. 

Crossposted, Reviews

Discovery CONTACT: See Myke & Friends Hunt Aliens

My friend Myke Cole is on TV again, this time on the Discovery Channel’s CONTACT, in which he, Mike Livingston, Sarah Cruddas, Nick Karnaze, Kawa Mawlayee, and Paul Beban, go hunting for answers to the question “have extraterrestrials made contact with humankind?”

This show is a LOT of fun. I did some fan art after episode one (before Paul and Kawa were introduced) and while I don’t actually expect the crew to find aliens to autopsy, they’re doing a fine job of making the case for alien visitation VERY hard to refute.

If I have a complaint, it’s that the show isn’t giving enough time to the asking of properly skeptical questions. That might be a choice made in the editing bay, however, because in my personal interactions with Myke, and my online interactions with Mike and Sarah, I get the impression that they’re very critical thinkers.

Not the sorts of people to hunt flying saucers with butterfly nets. My caricature does them a terrible disservice.

CONTACT airs on Wednesday nights on the Discovery Channel, and is available to cable subscribers for streaming on Discovery Go. 

Crossposted, Reviews

Ready or Not

I saw the trailer for Ready or Not while watching Zombie Tidal Wave over on SyFy this weekend, and my verdict is that this made Zombie Tidal Wave worth it. My ticket alone probably doesn’t cover the ad spend for the studio, but it’s a start. Thank you for thinking of me!

Ready or Not is a tender, uplifting rom-com about spending the night playing hide-and-seek with your new in-laws who happen to also be clumsy-yet-determined serial murderers seeking to appease their dark lord. So, y’know… a nice break from superhero films. Also, not particularly tender or uplifting.

It didn’t quite cross my Threshold of Awesome because I don’t like being tense, or jump-scared, and it was only almost as funny as I was hoping it would be, but I definitely enjoyed myself. It did not disappoint, however. If I’d been with a couple of like-minded friends I would have been laughing out loud instead of on the inside, and that might have been better.

For me. Maybe not for my friends.

The R-rating is for gore and language, and there are generous helpings of both.

Crossposted, Reviews

The Angry Birds Movie 2

You may recall my surprise when I loved The Angry Birds Movie, and enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Captain America: Civil War. That’s a pretty high bar to clear, especially for a sequel, but The Angry Birds Movie 2 takes a really good run at it, and, at least in places, out-performs the first film for me.

Here’s a metric. I almost laughed myself unconscious one time (something which I can actually do thanks to asthma). The first film almost did that to me three times. (So, three times it almost did it.)

This doesn’t mean the first film is three times better, or three times funnier—just that it surprised me more. And I suppose that’s more my fault than it is the film’s. I study humor for a living, and went into The Angry Birds Movie 2 expecting some amazing joke-craft, so I was (mostly) ready for it.

YMMV, of course.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 may have an oddly-constructed title (is there an extra word in there?) but it crosses my Threshold of Awesome nonetheless.  I’ll be buying the Blu-Ray, too, because re-watching these films and studying the way the animators, writers, and voice actors work together to craft a joke is, in fact, part of my job, making the disc a business expense.

I’m super fortunate that there are no laws against business expenses being fun, because this film is a lot of fun.