Reviews

Predator became an accidentally iconic movie because of the titular monster giving the movie a life of its own and soon becoming a franchise inseparable from Fox's own Alien. Both monsters came to be sci-fi-horror's defining icons on the big screen; and since 1979 for Alien, they BOTH still have the moniker of cinema's greatest 'space monsters'. And Predator showed that he could take on humanity's finest American soldiers in a tropical jungle, showing just how formidable this space hunter truly was!

A lot of movies have great ideas but struggle to have an equally strong story complementing the concept; Predator was a case where the cliched 1980s action-adventure trappings played perfectly into the set up for the monster, and how he was eons ahead of the competition set before him.

This film is just pure 1980s action cinema at its finest, and one of the most cleverly stealthy science-fiction films of all time. Predator lay the groundwork for a multimedia empire that's still wowing new fans today, and will continue to do so in the years to come.

Predator gets 9/10 IMDbs. 4.5/5 stars. Great stuff indeed.

The Good Dinosaur was Disney-PIXAR's first ever megaflop, and seeing the movie it's all because the film didn't have the 'wow factor' marketing of their other hits like Wall-E, Up or Toy Story 3; this film didn't have anything pushing it out from the crowd of PIXAR's already crowded 2010s line-up, which included 2015's mega-hit Inside Out.

The Good Dinosaur has the typical trappings of these kinds of talking animal movies: there's a buddy-dynamic at play, there's all sorts of characters that range from cynical scavengers to experienced families knowing the world inside and out, and help the protagonist in the end. The world-building is interesting here, but the story and voice-acting of the main character just stops this film from being great and makes you wish the film was silent (like even more so than Wall-E). It could have worked in a style similar to the 2016 film The Red Turtle; dinosaurs deserve a good silent movie to their name revolving ENTIRELY around them.

It's harmless stuff, and a good story of families and how all creatures adapt to the natural world: alternate history or not. Agricultural dinosaurs: it could easily lend itself to a larger franchise of spin-offs, but The Good Dinosaur isn't exactly lightning in a bottle. It's a jolt of animated colour that's an okay time-burner.

The film gets 6/10 IMDbs. 3/5 stars. Not one of PIXAR's finest, but it's okay.

Jupiter Ascending greeted the blockbuster season of 2015 with a resounding wet-fart of acclaim and financial devastation for Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow alike. This film had the hopeless (dis)honour of being another 'this is like Star Wars but different' space opera, and that comparison has itself become a tired cliche on its own. Why not compare Jupiter more to The Matrix or Jodorowsky's never made Dune, or something that's not just an uninspired comparison which was gonna be a Herculean task to actually achieve successfully in the first place?

The film as is, all its history aside, is dumb time-burning fun that has surely become an impressionable ten-year-old's favourite film of all time (who can tell when or whom these films strike a chord with?); and oh boy the screenplay is an inspired hot mess of flashy action and sci-fi reincarnation tropes mixed in with traces of ancient astronauts and pretty faces conveniently protected by fresh servings of deus ex machina and sci-fi pew-pew-pew all throughout its runtime.

Jupiter Ascending is a flashy guilty pleasure of a space opera; it prioritises vibe over story, and action over character development, and the cliches almost make the film out to be an ironic comedy for the ages rather than the deep drama it thought it was gonna be.

There is still an ever-evolving playbook for space-operas at the movies: and Jupiter Ascending is just one costly drop in that ever-growing stream of high-concept sci-fi flicks waiting to be consumed by hungry viewers.

This so-bad-it's-good blockbuster gets 5/10 IMDbs. 2.5/5 stars. Surely this was done INTENTIONALLY as a write-off for the companies at play? Who knows?

The Acolyte is the latest victim of Disney's Star Wars review-bobbing and Disney+'s latest entry in expanding the Saga in the world of streaming. Now though I said it's still too early to critique the whole thing, it's proving a bit of an iffy entry into Star Wars' lofty canon in film and television.

The Acolyte does do some stuff right like nailing the vibe of Star Wars, but the writing seems a tad shallow and the actors are making the best of the material they're stuck with. Maybe with all the whining people are making about this show now the other stuff on Disney+ isn't so... bad?

Honestly: the premature backlash just doesn't seem right UNTIL the entire thing's been released. I said this about Obi-Wan Kenobi and I'll stick with this argument for every other time this becomes an issue. Review-bombing just seems like an immature way to adversely affect products people deem as 'woke' or 'bad' so early on. The Acolyte is competent television, but it ain't the golden age 'event television' The Mandalorian proved itself to be. Heck, Acolyte ain't on the same level as The Bad Batch. Hopefully Skeleton Crew will be an improvement.

P. S. It's certainly pissed off some people for the right reasons, but some of the 'feedback' seems to be coming from Prequel apologists thinking the word owes George Lucas an 'overdue apology'. To each their own. But this show needs to have a breakout episode sooner rather than later.

The reason I compare this infamously hated sequel to Alien 3 is because the vision is... clearer than Alien 3's confused and frustrating payoffs that weren't payoffs at all. Don't get me wrong, Resurrection is still fatally flawed just like any of the post-Aliens sequels, but at least this one didn't seem to cave in from impromptu rewrites from Fox executives trying to make another marquee franchise entry like Alien 3 did; Resurrection at least had some semblance of a coherent story even if it's still confused and totally unnecessary in terms of canon (at this point it's basically Halloween in space and Michael Myers is the Xenomorph).

The Alien franchise has become something of a household name for a franchise that ballooned into something far bigger than a standalone film: and everything that comes after the original doesn't always necessarily work all of the time when you factor in ALL of the tie-in media since 1979 or 1986. So many movies can claim the same exact thing, like Planet of the Apes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Die Hard, The Exorcist: the list goes on and on, American and British cinema alike. Alien didn't NEED to be a sequel-bait franchise after Aliens, but the powers that be Hollywood bigwigs don't let these giants sleep peacefully.

Would I recommend this film? No. Do Alien fans look fondly upon it? Nope. Has it helped? In terms of what-not-to-dos in filmmaking, then yes. It's definitely not something to flaunt about the movie itself, but hey. It is what it is.

Alien Resurrection gets 4/10 IMDbs. 2/5 stars. Better than Alien 3 in certain regards, but certainly not a classic or good.

Alien 3 got reshot and rewritten to death where David Fincher disowned the film outright because it got so bloated and unrecognisable from a well-produced movie. And honestly he did the right thing disowning this film; Fincher's thankfully had a MUCH better career since starting off on the wrong foot with this movie.

After the first two Alien movies, along comes Alien 3 and shows that long-standing franchises are NOT always home runs of critical and commercial success. I feel like I need to run this meme my Star Wars, Planet of the Apes and Terminator fans: James Franco from 2016's Buster Scruggs: "First time?". Franchise suicide's predated FaceBook and Twitter many times before, and still very much a recurring problem for clueless studio executives just throwing money at the proverbial wall and hoping something sticks in the right way eventually.

Alien 3 takes what the first two Aliens established and throws it all into a wood-chipper and THEN an incinerator. Why make a film this hyped into an unmitigated disaster of clueless direction and a nonsensical story full of coincidences and retcons that feel like drinking fresh piss from a coffee mug? Jesus.

Even the good stuff feels like it's been trampled by all the preconceived mandates forced upon the film and the executive worms; Sigourney Weaver is wasted here and Charles Dance is easily the most missed opportunity with the casting on display: he basically plays a strong supporting character who's there to be 'slasher-flicked' in the most implausible and embarrassing way.

Alien 3 is a sequel done poorly, and though it's NOT the worst thing ever made, it's easily amongst the worst of the Aliens Saga by a long shot. And yes: Prometheus was FAR better than this too, what with that film's issues. That film had clearer vision and purpose regarding Alien, and didn't feel hamstrung by every kind of studio mandate under the sun.

Alien 3 gets a 3/10 here. 1.5/5 stars. Over thirty years on and this one still sucks.

Aliens became the first of MANY sequels to 1979's surprise sci-fi-horror blockbuster: and in many space-opera fashions like Star Wars and Star Trek the sequels got bigger and crazier in terms of scope (at least with their initial sequels) and lore. The Alien franchise also became a MASSIVE multimedia titan that just continued to grow after this star-bound action-flick came to define 1986's place in action-cinema history, and still being a robust horror-thriller in the process too.

The original Alien was definitely an eerie film that relied on its atmosphere instead of being a constant jump-scare fest (like many horror flicks nowadays), whereas Aliens makes you feel the presence of the Xenomorph as an all-encompassing threat that will not back down AT ALL, until its prey are either dead or impregnated by a dreaded face-hugger; and it's like a constant roller-coaster of 'OH SH! T' moments even with the gun-toting and flamethrowers keeping the terrifying monsters at bay on a 'Colony Planet' of smoke and cyberpunk-steel.

Aliens showed that James Cameron's success with Terminator wasn't an accident; it showed that he knew the genre trappings of fast sci-fi-action and ran with it thanks to Alien being an unexpected success in 1979; so why not make an 'antithesis' to that film's deliberately restrained pacing and eeriness with one that's still scary but non-stop momentum of explosive action? Alien and Aliens are two of the strongest 'back-to-back' franchise films ever in terms of quality and legacy. Aliens is so damn good it leaves similar sequels of iconic films to shame; it's a standout sequel that dared to be different enough yet flaunt the same horror tropes in a fast-paced action flick for the ages.

As far as the Alien films go, the first two movies really are as good as it gets! Sure the extended franchise has had its ups-and-downs, but all of those things owe their existence to two of the finest space adventures films ever made.

Aliens is a 10/10 for IMDb. 5/5 stars. It's a blast that still appeals to today's blockbuster sensibilities easily.

Once Upon a Studio should have been Walt Disney Animation's feature film epic instead of Wish capitalising on the company's 100th-Anniversary celebration; it could have been a meditative story on creative differences of traditional and computer animation reconciling their differences by the story's end or something. But the film itself right here is still wonderful, short or not. It's a celebration that's genuine instead of being involuntarily preachy like some celebratory films tend to be; it relishes the films that defined Disney's place in animated cinema up to 2023.

It's nice that Once Upon a Studio received critical acclaim and all that jazz short films deserve to receive in an industry that seems to be generally shafting them in favour of feature films, but why wasn't it nominated for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar (unless I missed something) or anything like that? Maybe it was 'too on the nose' for some awards pundits to honour... it STILL deserved it more than the likes of some of the company's recent feature length outings. This film was sincere and still used modern techniques to incorporate old-school cel-animation stuff alongside CGI and the actual Disney animation studio. It's what 'remix films' ought to be: plain and simple reimagining of tropes and characters that make up for the medium's history and place in cinema.

This short film had production values that other animated films would be sickly green with envy over how it turned out. And Disney did achieve something special here. Now can we PLEASE get another traditionally animated feature film from them again? It's long overdue and I think everyone would watch it given the right story and confidence in its marketing. If it's just half as genuine as this it'll work for sure.

10/10 IMDbs for sure. 5/5 stars. It's gorgeous.

Mr. Birchum fails at the most basic storytelling 101s of comedies trying to be introspective with its criticisms of modern America and instead comes across as a fuming mess of right-wing mental junk food courtesy of The Daily Wire + streaming service. Even without the political biases at play it still sucks because it isn't funny or witty at all. It's just another Family Guy knock-off that's even lazier with its animation and writing.

I feel like I owe other shows I've criticised in the past an overdue apology: because the animation here makes other bad animated shows look like the works of Chuck Jones or Hayao Miyazaki. Mr. Birchum is one of the ugliest cartoons ever made, and the colour palette is also dreadful; how the hell did this show get made without anyone saying 'this could do with some more work'? This show is a miracle of confounding creative decisions and conservative pandering that makes it all the more stupid for making anyone think this kind of crap is okay.

Mr. Birchum gets 1/10 on the IMDb front. It's a total waste of time and thought.

P. S. The last review was struck down for some reason; there wasn't anything 'unsavoury' last time, so it seems like someone just didn't like what I said about the show. It still sucks.

Tropic Thunder was met with acclaim and commercial success in 2008, and met with INTENSE controversy over Robert Downy Jr.'s now infamous blackface performance in the film (not to mention Simple Jack). Yet it was PART OF THE POINT the film was making regarding the lengths some creatives will go when making feature films that will impact the world further down the track.

Man: the world today feels like a totally alien place compared to 2008's landscape of global-warming preaching and 9/11 still being a very recent tragedy, and the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 being the then-cutting-edge game consoles, and gay jokes that would possibly be considered homophobic or some such rubbish (comedy's meant to be funny, not taken as literal demeaning mockery of real people). SO much has changed since the 2000s; fast forward to 2024 and so many of the film's jokes ARE triggering all the wrong people further proving the film's point and jokes.

It's kind of sad and funny that Tropic Thunder's mockeries of Hollywood have basically come true; today's industry is playing EXACTLY like how those fake trailers framed the industry (except for the lack of animation representation) what with the tired action franchises and comedy films, and of course mid-budget indies being awards-bait films. Ben Stiller knew what he was doing when he committed to directing this metafictional mockumentary of modern American Cinema.

It's funny stuff, and sadly something cinema of the 2020s seems terrified to tackle with 'crude nuance', ie South Park. Meta-comedies can be refreshing and necessary critiques for what they're mocking, and Tropic Thunder was a real treat for 2008's crowded blockbuster landscape (seriously 2008 was an ENORMOUS year for the movies).

Tropic Thunder gets 8/10 IMDb points. 4/5 stars. It's still a riot. Just don't show this one to easily triggered fellas (or you can still, what the hell).

Of course Squid Game, an inspired television series that makes commentary on competition itself, would get the most uninspired reality knock-off bearing its own name and cheapening the brand in kind.

This show feels like an AI-generated sewage pipe of been-there-done-that tropes that other shows of its ilk have infested the tv landscape with. It's an insult to modern television itself.

This could be labeled ANY other title under the sun and it'd still suck by any known metric of quality. This category of tv CAN be good when you've got the occasional Kitchen Nightmares episode having Gordon Ramsay have a real-life story of persistence reflect itself with a fulfilling outcome, but where is that fulfilment here? Even with shows like Kitchen Nightmares being diamonds in the rough (somewhat), there's still awful episodes in shows like it.

I'm probably being relentless here with my take in this show here, and I'm sorry, but it's honestly how I feel about it and reality tv itself as a 'medium'. When it's good it's watchable, but when it's not, it's like a documentary made of diarrhoea and no solid story.

0/10 IMDb points. 0/5 stars. I know it's officially 1/10 here because of the review score, but my god is this placeholder sludge at its worst.

Titan A. E. was a tragic victim of 'studio sidelining' where a film is shafted in favour of a bigger and 'more viable' product; in this case, it seemed Fox was focusing its efforts on X-Men in getting adequate promos and licensing deals to make that movie soar at the box office. Titan A. E. was sporadically promoted besides the occasional tv spot, but the tie-in campaign proved very moot compared to tentpole Disney films at the time.

Titan A. E. also has the distinction of being Don Bluth's latest feature film, as his in-development Dragon's Lair film still hasn't been released. It sucks, because Don always had a knack for blending pathos in with slapstick comedy that few animators dared to balance as well as he did (with the likes of Secret of Nimh, American Tail, Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven); and it would have been nice seeing that trend continue into the 2000s and beyond. Sadly, it hasn't seen another film of his yet, and fans of Don Bluth are still waiting for Dragon's Lair to become a movie. Hopefully the day will come soon when Bluth graces the world with another of his feature films.

This movie was also a nice refreshing change of pace from all the musical animated films that were nigh-omniscient thanks to the Disney Renaissance still rubbing off on the competition. Science fiction has only gotten stronger representation in animation recently thanks to the Spider-Verse films, and films like them and Wall-E owe themselves to films like Titan A. E. and The Iron Giant daring to give audiences something different and high-concept escapism in a field dominated by Disney Princesses and talking animals.

2000s animation was something of a crazy and difficult time for theatrical toons; the technology evolved rapidly thanks to PIXAR's films and Dreamworks' Shrek, and traditional cel-animation still had a foothold on television when it was dying out at the movies. And Titan A. E. is a fascinating window into that time for the animation industry, where the demands of audiences were changing and becoming very complicated, and it seemed like a case of it being too ahead of its time (who knows how a film like this would have performed in the 2010s or 2020s in a post-Spider-Verse world?). Hindsight makes it impossible to know if a failure could have had a 'second chance' at success given the proper promotional material, or if it was always gonna play out the same way regardless.

7/10 IMDb points. 3.5/5 stars. Titan A. E. gives us a glance at a simpler time for animated cinema; and how sci-fi animation has continued to refine itself thanks to the likes of it and others daring to defy Disney.

Baby Reindeer is based on Richard Gadd's real life story and how his life got turned upside down when an emotionally needy desperate woman started making everyday a living hell.

Of course with these true story shows, the names are changed up but the narrative is still very much there in spite of all the name changes to avoid pissing off the real people (which is ironic saying it, because Martha's inspiration is trying to sue Gadd and Netflix); and the characters are all fatally flawed humans indeed.

For as disturbing and bittersweet some of the payoffs were regarding Baby Reindeer's story, I've gotta say that the characters prove that the events in the show actually happened, because a lot of these characters have 'a$$hole syndrome' about them in spades. And it's refreshing when Gadd's character tries to be better than the a$$holes filling up his world (though he doesn't always stay 'the better man').

This is 2024's sleeper hit: and for good reason, controversial or not. 8/10 IMDb points. 4/5 stars. It's important but heavy television.

The Final Fantasy franchise has become one of the most storied and iconic video game franchises in history; and that's made clear to this game being a remake (more a reimagining) of the iconic original 1997 game that basically introduced the world to JRPGs on a massive scale. Remake is like a retelling of a classic film that goes into the nuances the first game didn't necessarily cover, not because it couldn't but because the pacing and story structure was that different to the standards of 1997 and how the game was originally conceived.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first of what I'll call 'The Remake Trilogy' or 'The Sephiroth Trilogy': because that iconic pretty boy hero-turned-homicidal-maniac is the narrative glue of the game, in its themes and how he wants the same thing as AVALANCHE, a world free of Shinra and 'poison'; the big difference is that Sephiroth wants ALL of it gone instead of AVALANCHE wanting to save The Planet from a totalitarian energy company.

All the iconic moments from the original game's Midgar segment are all here, and it's given more room to develop the side characters and stories that benefit The Remake Trilogy's broader scope of world-building and character-development. Cloud and company are still the same noble freedom fighters they were in '97, but given a quasi-anime-and-semi-photorealistic sheen for the Ultra HD era of video gaming.

Are there issues with the game? The side quests tend to grind on for longer than you'd be comfortable with, and kind of dent the pacing of the main story, but they're not total deal-breakers when it comes to affecting the game's overall fun factor. The Hard difficulty makes items pointless, and the boss fights can range from unusually easy to hair-greying-ly hard.

Final Fantasy VII Remake has all the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to a modern AAA-title; and thankfully the good is real strong with this one.

10/10 IMDb points. 5/5 stars. This is a fantasy to die for. Give it a shot.

Wish feels like Disney's proverbial 'AI-generated movie' in the way it was written, plotted and scored with milquetoast Alan-Menken-wannabe songwriters who are trying to fulfill the studio's laundry-list mandate of Easter eggs and direct callbacks to Walt Disney Studios' 100-years-of-filmmaking; the only problem is that the stuff that's supposed to be fan service here comes across as shallow pandering and the story feels emptier because of Wish's shortcomings as a feature film celebrating one of Hollywood's most coveted studios.

Wish has the Disney Princess with Asha of course, the cute animal sidekick (forget the goat's name), the world-weary side characters and the Big Baddie in King Magnifico serving as motivation for the hero to overcome and save the day. Why does this all feel so damn familiar? Because the Disney Renaissance utilised this formula so much better and with more creative flare with all of their marquee feature films (to reference a few); Wish feels like it's repeating that and everything since 2010's Tangled. What you get is a hodgepodge of decent animation trying to bring an uninspired story to life that we've all seen before.

What's the good about the film (along with some of what doesn't work)? I guess Asha was a likable enough main character and the animation was alright, but the rest of the cast ranges from totally inconsequential to placeholder stereotypes of other Disney characters. The score (not the musical songs) is great during the film's closing credits that do a better job at honoring Disney's legacy than the actual film itself does. It's weird.

Honestly, the short film 'Once Upon a Studio' was the superior Centenary birthday gift for Disney; it had better focus, clearer direction, sharper respect for Disney's history and it could have been the basis for a feature film too. It was all right there; right in front of them. But hindsight is its own double-edged sword when it comes to delivering products that may or may not sell, especially when you're as massive as a studio like Disney is. Wish leaves you wanting more, and not in the good kind of way; it's like eating a meal that leaves your stomach crying for something more filling.

Wish should have become Disney's 100th-Birthday-Extravaganza on the big screen in feature length format; instead it's a reminder of how the studios' animated offerings of late haven't been as good as they used to be in the 1990s. It's a passion project that prioritises Easter eggs and callbacks over the story at hand. Sure it tries making literal magic and wishes a part of the story, but they don't feel any less cliched and on the nose like so many of us joke about regarding Disney tropes, period.

Wish gets 4/10 IMDb points. 2/5 stars. This film or no, Disney's 100-Years+ of existing is no small feat for any iconic brand to claim as part of their identity. If only Wish had the narrative confidence of past Disney films that typified the company's image for so many of us. It's a shame.

Barbie is very much a guilty pleasure kind of movie, and it's become a MASSIVE target for online pundits to mock and chastise its take on Mattel's most iconic toy line. And it became 2023's highest grossing film too. It outdid Mario. Why? Because I think both those camps were desperate for movies that weren't simple 'hack jobs' and the hype was just THAT insurmountable.

Barbie is a weird movie, but its self-awareness stops it from being a total slog through IP-promo-fodder like 'The Emoji Movie' or 'The Playmobil Movie'; it's kind of bizarre that a Barbie movie became a billion-dollar blockbuster with such a wacky story too. I guess they had to make it weird and meta to justify the film's existence at all.

When will there be screenings of the movie when people dress up as the characters and rant at the screen similar to screenings for 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' or 'The Room'? That'd be a blast I'm sure.

Now that this film's a thing, how long will it be before Mattel milks it out with its other franchises like He-Man and Thomas the Tank Engine (if that's strictly theirs)? My guess is they're gonna try and make those within the next 5/10 years.

7/10 IMDb points.

Space Jam was a lot of 90s kids' first ever introduction to Looney Tunes, and what a wacky intro to the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and co. The movie is definitely a 1996 movie through and through, what with its 'sooky' marquee song 'I Believe I Can Fly' bookending the film from start to finish and the emphasis on movies that were new at the time like Pulp Fiction getting referenced; and the film was probably made possible due to Who Framed Roger Rabbit showing animation and live-action can still work on-screen, but made easier thanks to the 1990s' rapidly evolving technological advances in cinema.

Space Jam was a commercial hit at the time but critical buzz was mixed, and Chuck Jones himself apparently hated the movie. All of that didn't stop many of us looking back on this movie with equally genuine and ironic sentiment years down the track. Fast forward to the 2020s and of course there's a sequel, and it didn't seem to work like the first time around.

Space Jam may not be a typical cinephile's cup of tea exactly, but it makes the viewers happy and the vibes of the live-action stuff mixed with the Looney Tunes cast makes this movie a camp classic that has garnered a massive cult following. 7/10 IMDb points. 3.5/5 stars. It's easy stuff to watch.

Robot Chicken was probably most people's introduction to Adult Swim before Rick & Morty even made the pilot phase of its production; and it's all thanks to this show's emphasis on pop-culture gags and stop-motion making the commentary materialized on-screen.

Some of the episodes are constant laugh-out-loud assaults on our diaphragms, whilst others may be not all that amusing, but Robot Chicken is comfort food on the television screen, and it knows when to see the funny in the most bleak things in life.

Some of the standout episodes are easily the Specials riffing Star Wars and DC Comics (their Batman gags have become legendary), and of course The Nerd character is something of an outspoken mascot for the show itself.

Robot Chicken is anthology tv done perfectly for comedy, and the jokes can still be funny even if one doesn't understand the references ALL of the time. 8/10 IMDb points. 4/5 stars. It's simple but effective comedy. Give it a watch.

Fallout is a sure fire way to introduce non-fans to the iconic franchise. As for me, I had casual knowledge of the video games from friends and family, but I've never played them myself (I've gravitated to stuff like Final Fantasy, Mass Effect and Legend of Zelda when it comes to role-playing action-adventure games). Now I think I just might play them, because the show does a good job of establishing the world for fans and non-fans alike. THIS is video game television done right just like The Last of Us (of which I am a fan).

The show has your 'typical' post-apocalyptic tropes of desperate survivors killing each other for resources like food and water, but things are distinctly more nuclear here, as the world's suffered several Atomic Holocausts since the late-21st Century in Fallout's timeline. It's a dark setting filled with surprisingly goofy black humor and bloody gunslinging action, and a retro-futuristic future that's ACTUALLY all about the future itself. Also the characters range from doe-eyed people naive of the wider world, to weary cowboys untrusting of anyone or anything unless they themselves are the ones in control of their own life. Also, the Brotherhood is like if a syndicate of steampunk-like Iron Man suits brought medieval traditions into a 'post-societal world' of knights and squires doing the bidding of their lords.

Update relating to the series: saying nothing of the spoilers here, Fallout Season Two is official! Will it continue the stories told here strictly, or will there be even more characters set to appear in this series adapting one of gaming's most iconic franchises? Whatever happens, I'm sure it'll continue what made Season One a strong magnet for television audiences in the first place. Amazon may be letting the irony of the 'Vault Tec' go under their nose or over their head, but I don't know if anyone else is as oblivious to it as them. It's genuinely funny when a hit show has something to say about corporate America, when the satire is backed by one of today's ultimate perps of corporate culture being a terrifyingly unstable double-edged sword. It's funnily scary that way.

Fallout continues Amazon's tradition of trying to oust its competition in Netflix and HBO, by trying to use the methods of both brands: releasing the show day one and using marquee actors (like Kyle MacLachlan), sex and violence to forward the story, and Ramin Djawadi doing the theme music (that's a must for HBO at this stage). With the show continuing, it's gonna be interesting to see how the Fallout show will go beyond the world of the games.

Overall, it's a good show. It's very watchable, has a great post-apocalyptic vibe to it, and the story keeps getting more interesting the further you keep watching and seeing the world kind of open up as the episodes play along.

Fallout gets 9/10 IMDb points. 4.5/5 stars.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, started off as a niche 1980s indie comic, and now it's a franchise that's bigger than the likes of Superman and Archie. Of course a franchise as storied as TMNT had several video games over the years and Shredder's Revenge took the best of all those beat-'em-ups and made an arcade style game that honors the legacy of the TMNT characters and old fashioned side-scrolling action games too.

This game's simply fun; the story is your typical Turtles vs Shredder storyline, and your job is to stop him from getting ultimate power by leveling up your roster of fighters over the course of an arcade game paced adventure. The gameplay is very fluid and retro-feeling, and the pacing is brisk in all the right ways; sure the storyline is a bit too short for longterm playing, but the story isn't the main priority: it's the fan service of the characters themselves against a simple plot backdrop. And that's more than okay.

Shredder's Revenge is simply meant to be fun, fun and more fun. It's a retro inspired game that balances modern sensibilities with old-school vibes in all the areas it needed to deliver. And for some developers that's nigh impossible to do.

A good time that's simple yet challenging, retro yet accessible for any devoted gamer, and its 'old' but charming aesthetic makes Shredder's Revenge an example of fan service done right.

Play this one on any system (save MacOS, yet). It's worth your time and money. 4/5 stars.

Rebel Moon 2 is the long awaited sequel to the nothing-burger that was the last movie. Zack Snyder shows that he's capable with captivating visuals and well-choreographed action sequences, but his screenwriting chops just don't cut it when he's doing a self-indulgent 'passion project' that was originally gonna be a Star Wars movie, and he takes character development as 'trivial' instead of seriously like any veteran director treats as equal priority with personal vision.

Where to start with this thing? First of all, it feels like Part Two was more a threat of more-of-the-same that the last movie offered, and lo-and-behold: it pretty much is exactly that, except it's a 'pay off' to a culminate story that doesn't feel earned at all.

Zack Snyder is a good director when he's got a good script to play with, but don't give him his own script. He'll lose all self-awareness and will go full blown George Lucas over his own lack of creative restraint or finesse on his own movies.

Rebel Moon 2 MIGHT be potentially 'remedied' if they release an oversized cut that includes both movies back-to-back, and with extra coverage, but it'd be of little comfort for newcomers who've already heard what they need to know about the film already.

This kind of film... it's a wonder Netflix said yes to this one, considering it's a blockbuster-budgeted film that didn't get a wide theatrical release (it got limited release before Netflix) to try and recoup the ridiculous amounts of money sunk into Zack Snyder's now infamous Star Wars ripoff. And they wanted this thing to be a 'franchise' comparable to Harry Potter, James Bond and the MCU, etc.

Rebel Moon 2 brings closure to one of the most puzzling two-parters in recent memory, and has you wondering: is there gonna be anything else from Snyder or this 'franchise' afterwards?

This is a bit of a weirdly boring movie, what with its development lacking any impact on viewers, and the abuse of the slow-motion technique hampers Rebel Moon in almost every conceivable way.

This one's a 2/5 flop-sweat-maker. It's really not a well-defined movie like you'd expect from similarly high-concept directors tackling passion projects, but hey; maybe it'll inspire someone to do even better than what we got here.

They Shall Not Grow Old honors the fallen of World War One with cinematic flare, and poignant tragedy in that many of these men never knew that they'd one day be in the movies (about real world history) and would fight for their grandchildren to relish the peace they died to uphold.

This is historical cinema brought to life by being recreative AND giving 1-to-1 honest commentary on the war thanks to archival recordings played throughout the film. This is a documentary that tries being informative about the past by recreating it with the technology of the 2010s. This film must have been a nightmare to brainstorm in a way that made sense to 2018 cinephiles/documentary-junkies.

Thankfully the film is a well done tribute to fallen soldiers where some of them never returned home alive, but this film gives a full-bodied picture of the early 20th-Century and gives the era depth by making it 'talk and breathe' in this movie.

They Shall Not Grow Old gives a voice to the long-passed soldiers of World War One and makes sure they're immortalised in an ever-complicated landscape of modern documentary cinema.

Hopefully more documentaries covering more periods of modern history will follow this film's innovative remixing of our understanding of the 'old' modern world.