By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation One of the small things about The Mandalorian that has been lingering the background of my mind since the first season is how little of it is actually about The Mandalorian. This seems like a weird thing to say, as Din is the lead character and the focus of the…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation And we are back! After a nearly three year wait (kind of, more on that in a second), The Mandalorian has reached our TV screens once again. For better and for worse, the show continues to be one of our true remaining “event TV” programs, able to get news cycles…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Remember COVID-19? Ok hear me out. I know referencing that in the start of a Star Wars review sounds weird as hell but it has a purpose. While we are still in the middle of said pandemic (and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon), 2020 was the…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Where do we start here? Do we start with Henry and Sam’s tragic story – a story that, as Kathleen says in the episode, is arguably fate? Do we start with Kathleen’s own motivations, which have become twisted and warped in by trauma, survivor’s guilt, and fear of that which…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation It has been over 3 years since the first season of The Mandalorian first aired back in late 2019 as the first real “killer app” for Disney+. In fact, Disney was so confident in The Mandalorian as their big show that they launched the service with the program premiering on…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation The only question that is going through your mind when asking yourself “should I see Cocaine Bear” is whether or not like the words “cocaine” and “bear” in the same sentence. If so, then honestly, you don’t really need this review cause you are probably interested and seeing it anyways.…
By Matthew Moorcroft Unsure Um… what? Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania feels like it should be better then it actually is. It’s filled to the brim with cool ideas and wicked imagery, fully taking advantage of the “Tales to Astonish” serial origins of it’s character and Steve Ditko’s playful yet completely earnest designs. Sure, it…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation About partway through this episode of The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie are attacked by a group of what they assume to be raiders. Joel tries to fend them off while Ellie goes into hiding, but Joel is cornered and nearly chocked to death. Ellie comes to his rescue…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Oh wow. The praise going into this episode of The Last of Us was near overwhelming to the point where I was worried it wasn’t going to live up to it. It’s easy to get swept up in hype and lose the bigger picture, and I like to keep a…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Immediately The Retreat stands out as a stronger then usual episode of the show for a couple of reasons. From it’s opening montage depicting Jen’s new lease on life after finding somebody she genuine connects with – only to immediately lose it as soon she sleeps with him. And then…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation “Bomb the whole city.” Those are the chilling words delivered at the cold open of this episode, and it’s fitting then that, in the same episode, it ends in a massive explosion to wipe out a horde of infected that is coming towards Joel and Ellie. It’s also fitting then…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The discourse surrounding so called “cinematic video games” is so pervasive nowadays that it’s genuinely hard to remember a time where The Last of Us, originally released in 2013, was seen as revolutionary achievement. And while many games have tried to replicate it’s cinematic, one-take approach to storytelling to varying…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation Out of every MCU shows we’ve had so far, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the hardest to sustain a conversation about. Not because it’s bad, mind you – the show, as a whole, continues to be an entertaining and funny in all of the right ways – but because simply…
By Matthew Moorcroft Definitely think we could use more of these, just so people know what’s going on. We are about a month into 2023 and life already seems to have, both metaphorically and literally, decided to make itself tough. Lots of emotional baggage and personal stuff have come to a head this month, along…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It may seem like an eternity ago, but Kevin Williamson was once the king of the slasher genre. With the double whammy of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, the game was changed. Gone were the days of scared teenagers, clueless adults, and summer camps gone awry.…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation I’ve never read Don DeLillo’s White Noise. In fact, my only prior experience with DeLillo in general is through David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis, which I found to be one of Cronenberg’s more unique and hard to decipher works. This is mostly a long winded way of saying that Noah…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The original Knives Out’s breath of fresh air – and surprise box office success – was cut short by the news that Netflix had acquired the rights to it’s now two sequels. Part of Knives Out’s own success in theaters, apart from it being an original murder mystery from a…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BABYLON, PARTICULARLY THE 10 LAST MINUTES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Babylon’s extended opening sequence – which begins with literal elephant shit graphically splayed across the screen and around our lead character and ends with said elephant being used as a distraction at a party-turned-orgy…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Was there any doubt? I’m pretty sure at this point you’d be a fool to underestimate James Cameron as a filmmaker. The man has defied expectations time and time again to the point where it’s almost superhuman in how he accomplishes his feats. You can’t make a sequel to Alien…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation For some reason, 2022 has been the year of Pinocchio overload. Outside of this widely anticipated version from auteur Guillermo del Toro, there is also another animated version that earlier this year infamously starring Pauly Shore, as well as a live action Disney remake. And with so many famous versions…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation If anybody was going to do a biopic on Steven Spielberg, it might as well be the man himself. And that’s pretty much what The Fabelmans is despite all of the names being changed around; this is pretty much as autobiographical as they come, and those in tune with Spielberg’s…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation How do you follow up a cinematic milestone? The simple answer is, usually, you don’t, and leave it at that. Black Panther’s very existence might be mostly the result a studio hoping to expand their universe with a large array of characters to maximize profit, but director Ryan Coogler and…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation I know it’s going to be weird starting off a review about The Banshees of Inisherin by talking about yet more Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri discourse, but here me out. Three Billboards, admittedly, is the rare movie that has soured for me over time. I still quite like it…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation A thud in the night is what startles Jessica, our lead, awake. It’s a loud, sudden burst of noise after a long stretch of silence, and the banging never returns. As Jessica lies awake, waiting for it to happen again and possibly find some kind of source for the bizarre…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation In terms of cinematic blindspots, Hirokazu Kore-eda has remained one of the biggest in terms of my own personal experience. Outside of general praise from fellow cinephiles and a constant reminder of the strength of his films – particularly when Shoplifters hit several years ago and was widely seen as…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Park Chan-wook is one fascinating guy huh? One of South Korea’s most enigmatic talents, it’s not surprising that as Korean cinema has flourish over the past several years, Chan-wook himself has remained something of a cinephile only name. While his contemporaries like Bong Joon-ho and Hwang Dong-hyuk have achieved mainstream…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It’s been a long road to get here for One Piece fans. Out of the so-called “Big Three”, One Piece has always been the one that, while having a large cult following in North America, has never been able to reach the same heights in terms of popularity as Naruto…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation When it comes to projects aimed solely to be mostly STEM propaganda aimed at younger audiences, you could honestly not pick a better subject to do it then the Mars rovers. Outside of being one of the more easier to understand concepts about space exploration – as they say in…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation About halfway through Women Talking is when you realize that they still haven’t left the hayloft. This makes sense, of course, as the women of the titular title have an near impossible decision ahead of them. In the wake of numerous sexual assaults from the men in their community, they…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation I’ll give Ruben Östlund this, he certainly knows how to be the center of attention in the room at all times. After years and years of being a Cannes darling – including with this film – Triangle of Sadness is the first time Östlund really seems have hit something of…
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