Books

This article contains spoilers for Midnight Mass. Midnight Mass is the project that’s rattled around Mike Flanagan’s head the longest. According to the creator himself, Flanagan developed the central conceit of the faith-based horror story well before his horror career even began. The project has been fine tuned many times, first as a novel, then

Remember George Lucas? He’s back… in figure form! Yes, the filmmaking visionary who, with some help, conceived a ubiquitously-dominant film franchise, is set to be immortalized in plastic via the practice that put the Star Wars merchandising machine on the map. Indeed, Hasbro Toys has revealed a new George Lucas rendition, this one arriving in

Genre TV fans owe a lot to the spy drama Alias. Premiering twenty years ago this week (just..how??), Alias was a near-instant critical and commercial success thanks to its near-perfect pilot episode. It went on to run for five seasons full of ambitious, go-for-broke storytelling that featured rich character dynamics and wasn’t afraid to take

As Disney’s Star Wars Sequel Trilogy movies became a hot button topic in recent years, the scathing stigma once widely attached to their immediate predecessors, Lucasfilm’s 1999-2005 Prequel Trilogy, has oddly eased back. It’s a phenomenon that, 16 years after their conclusion, is attributed to generational nostalgia and, arguably, plot-enriching context on the films’ era

Something that impresses me with a superhero movie like Venom is when it doesn’t rush directly into the expected villain. When there are four different Fantastic Four movies, and they’re all about emphasizing Dr. Doom, it’s a breath of fresh air when, say, Man of Steel only makes an Easter egg reference to Lex Luthor

This article contains light spoilers for Midnight Mass. As far as vacation spots go, Crockett Island on Netflix’s Midnight Mass doesn’t seem to be a bad choice. The weather is chilly, but a nice cable-knit sweater will take care of that. There are also plenty of feral kitties to attempt to pet. Best of all,

This The Walking Dead review contains spoilers. The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 6 Clearly, writer Kevin Dieboldt and the various creative crew behind The Walking Dead are Wes Craven fans. The 1991 Wes Craven film The People Under the Stairs was one of the better movies Craven did, and it remains a lot of

This Evil review contains spoilers. Evil Season 2 Episode 11 Leland (Michael Emerson) does all the voices, from the venerated holy relics of The Exorcist to Laraine Newman’s Shirley Temple in Saturday Night Live’s takeoff on it. He tosses priests across rooms with one hand tied to a bedpost. He sweats, swears and pukes vile,

Almost every announcement in the September 2021 Nintendo Direct broadcast tried to one-up the other reveals. Audiences finally got the long-awaited Bayonetta 3 gameplay trailer (it was every bit as exciting as we hoped), minutes after the internet was left to decide whether to shout “Wahoo!” or “Mamma mia!” over the Super Mario movie voice

The Sandman author Neil Gaiman has famously fought off numerous attempts to adapt his most famous graphic novel series, but in Netflix’s TUDUM event, a sneak peek clip and some character art for a few of the most recognizable characters give fans a glimpse of the vision the author finally brought to life along with

Few series have been more resilient than Castlevania. The first few games in the franchise were fairly standard 8-bit platformers (albeit with a unique horror vibe), but over time, entries in this series became less linear and more about exploration, eventually helping to inspire a whole new subgenre: “Metroidvania.” While the 3D Castlevania games never

The beauty of the natural world and its spiritual elements have long been popular subjects for anime, and in the new short film anthology Star Wars: Visions that translates to rich forests and bringing life to once barren ground. With its emphasis on how characters affect the environments around them, Visions touches on both the

This article contains no spoilers for Midnight Mass.  Horror auteur Mike Flanagan is responsible for many excellent spooky sagas since his first major film Oculus debuted in 2013. The writer/director has shepherded films like Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gerald’s Game, and Doctor Sleep; and TV series like Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The

This Star Wars: Visions article contains spoilers. At the center of Star Wars sit the twins. A cornerstone of the Original Trilogy, Luke and Leia are also the template for some of the shorts in the Star Wars: Visions anime anthology. The episode “The Twins” takes this concept the most literally, presenting twins born for

The sunk cost fallacy is a powerful thing. Despite the fact that the current pandemic has audiences more desperate than ever for tentpole films, no one has exactly been clamoring for the continuation of the Fantastic Beasts series, slated to have five movies in total. So it was with muted fanfare that Warner Bros. announced

This article is presented by Apple TV+. Click here for a free trial to stream Foundation! When considering the adaptation of a classic science fiction universe as massive as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, the sheer scale of such an enterprise seems quite daunting. How can Apple TV+ take a story that spans centuries in a

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America is as epic as The Godfather, gorier than Goodfellas, and as streetwise as Mean Streets. It tells a full history, from childhood to old age, street hustles to political suicides, community toilets to opium dens. The version which is right now available on Netflix has been amazingly

Hulu’s original comedy series Only Murders in the Building has a lot going for it, namely the outstanding acting of its star trio. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez have found all the right notes to hit on comedically and dramatically to create a program that makes you feel warm inside while laughing your

The Masters of the Universe franchise is experiencing a major resurgence, with three new series on Netflix after a drought of animated content after the 2002 MOTU series ended in 2004. The new era has been an altogether unexpected one for the franchise. Leading off with a new version of She-Ra, a character not seen

This Squid Game article contains some spoilers, though not the outcome of the game. There are so many things to like about Squid Game, Netflix‘s Korean-language series about a group of desperate people competing in a deadly game, but one of the major ones is the stellar cast. Featuring some well-known Korean actors, as well

Television’s biggest night is finally here! No, it’s not the M*A*S*H finale or any of the three Super Bowls Tom Brady lost – it’s the 2021 Emmy Awards ceremony. This is the second Emmys in a row under pop culture’s new normal. The pandemic still trudges along and television now occupies a particularly prominent space

I loved Deathloop despite its various flaws, but the one thing I keep going back to whenever I think back to my time with the game is its lack of traditional difficulty settings and how the absence of those options really highlights why it feels like more and more people have been calling for optional

Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond is coming to an end. This truth has been known ever since it was announced that Craig would reprise the role in No Time to Die, his fifth outing as 007. And yet, given the litany of delays that movie has endured largely due to the pandemic—remember when No