By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Comics don’t have endings. One of the unfournate truths about getting into superhero stories is that many of them are static on purpose. This is for practical purposes, mainly – maintaining a sort of status quo keeps the character from straying too far from the public consciousness while also allowing…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Similar to the creatures the films revolve around, the Evil Dead franchise just never dies. Having gone from cult hit in the 80s to influential horror icons in the 90s all the way to gore-infused throwbacks of the 2010s, it’s been a wild ride for the series that had it’s…
By Matthew Moorcroft Less 12 hours ago, as I am writing this, The Hollywood Reporter broke that a Twilight TV series is in the works. The show, which is being developed by Sinead Daly (The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Tell Me Lies), is in early development at Lionsgate who will sell the show to a…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Joel has always been a uniquely fascinating character to me. In the realm of mentor figures, he’s always been one of the few that the writers are not afraid to critique and deconstruct; his imperfections are brought forth as part of the main core thesis of his character. And yet,…
By Matthew Moorcroft After having been in announced in 2022 with very little since, we finally have our first major piece of news to come out for the Knuckles show, and all of it is pretty fascinating stuff when all is said and done. Both Deadline and Variety were reporting this information prior. The series,…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation Every year when there is a bunch of video game adaptations coming out, we always tend to say “this is the year video game movies explode” and it never happens. The long elusive medium has been a bone in the movie industry’s side ever since 1993 when Super Mario Bros.…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation When we catch up with John Wick at the start of his fourth chapter, it’s the first time in the series that there is a clear jump ahead in time. Wick is still scarred, but he isn’t limping around as much anymore. He’s instead in hiding, waiting for his next…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation D&D is in such a strange position in pop culture at the moment. Even beyond it’s current controversies involving Hasbro and their treatment of third party OGL, the franchise at large is sitting at the verge of mainstream recognition and popularity but just isn’t quite there yet. With the success…
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 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 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 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 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 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…
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