The most notable thing about Ridley Scott‘s The Martian is how casual it is. It takes place in a near future where NASA has finally trekked to Mars, but there is no sense of gravitas or portent to this detail. It’s just a workaday fact. Like in Scott’s Alien, the astronauts in The Martian are not stoic philosophical avatars, but...
Category - Review
Cooties came out today, September 18, 2015, in select theaters and on VOD platforms. The film stars Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, and Rainn Wilson. It was directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion. Cooties was written by Leigh Whannell and Ian Brennan and produced by Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller. I went into the screening of Cooties not...
This article is the first in a possible series about 70s and 80s Turkish mockbusters, which were essentially cheap Turkish rip-offs of Hollywood classics, brought to you from the point-of-view of a Turkish-American film critic. I was born in Turkey in 1979. For the first eight years of my life, my entire experience with TV consisted of a single...
In online circles, oddball auteur M. Night Shyamalan has become something of a pariah, regularly ostracized by critics, but especially savaged by fanboys and fangirls for his sideways approach to certain fantasy and horror films; some cannot forgive his live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender. Frankly, I don’t believe his reputation as...
“When civilization ends, it ends fast.” There we go! I have to admit, last week’s pilot episode of Fear The Walking Dead had me a little apprehensive. While I was excited at the potential built into the show, I was a little underwhelmed by pacing. As is so often with pilot episodes, you catch a glimpse of what might make a show...
Before I dive into the reviews I wanted to ask readers if they have gone digital or are considering it. What is your take on the digital revolution? I used to think I was a hard line collector but the digital sirens have been calling. I buy a digital copy of the three comics I review and have started buying digital comics with more regularity. It...
“It’s not canon and there aren’t enough puns!” Ah, nerds. So angry all the time at works of fiction and people’s opinion of it. I get it. I get nerd ragey at times, too. However, I also try to critique movies based on how well they’re made, as objectively as I can. As most of you know, the newest Fantastic Four...
On this week’s Legion of Leia podcast, Anastasia Washington, Sabina Ibarra and I welcome the wonderful Chloe Dykstra. You know Chloe from Heroes of Cosplay and pretty much the rest of the geek universe. She and I met doing a geek girl calendar with fellow Legion of Leia writers Shaun Rosado and Christina Janke. We have the same tattoo...
The Mission: Impossible film series – based on the 1966 TV series – always been something of a mixed bag. Although I appreciate the steely perplexities of Brian De Palma‘s 1996 original, it’s a wholly oblique movie that seems wrapped up in post-Cold-War spy milieu that had, by the late 1990s, become effectively defunct. John...
Another week and another small stack waiting for me at my local comic book shop. For me small stack is a relative term and of course I couldn’t leave nearly empty handed so I had to pick up a few new books as well. I am glad I did because two of them made it into this weeks list. Prez #2 has been on my list to talk about since I read the...