K. A. Mabus (Penumbra Investigations)

Strictly speaking, it's not the worst horrorshow I've ever seen. That having been said, you can really tell the difference between professional writers and self-published amateur Reddit posters, here. The production value is (more or less) there and some of the actors do a fairly good job with what they're given but the stories lack any deliberate craftsmanship or sign of collegiate education. Horror is actually very difficult to write. There's a fine line between fantastic and funny, terrifying and cheesy, etc. This show fumbles to deliver that distinction and it's entirely due to the overall quality (or lack thereof) of the source material. Even the host who interviews the Reddit thread posters at the end of each adaptation just generally seems unenthusiastic and bored; delivering empty compliments to a generation of writers with no discernable future in the trade. The plotlines are often predictable and unoriginal; clumsily retelling a precarious jumble of established genre taboos. The characters are more akin to storytelling tools than human beings with personality traits and flaws. The horror itself is just generally about as unnerving and angst-riddled as an insurance payment. All-in-all, it's the kind-of program designed specifically to inspire future generations of writers...but will, instead, cause them to abandon all hope prematurely and pursue a real job.

...originally, The Joker was intentionally written without an origin story because Psychopaths don't have them. They're charismatic apex predators who, due to a severe chemical imbalance in their brain, are incapable of empathy. As such, they aren't 'created by society'. They're born. They don't 'snap'. Some of them simply get caught one day after acting horribly for decades. There is often a duality to their personality but it isn't disassociative and it isn't a coping mechanism. It's just a mask. These personality traits, unsettling as they may be, define The Joker. He's scarier because he ISN'T a biproduct of society. He's interesting because there ISN'T anything under that facepaint to psychoanalyse. Psychopaths don't identify with society...and that's exactly what makes them so intriguing. Taking all of that away from The Joker devalues the authenticity of his identity. These movies are mostly a misdiagnosis of The Jokers' psychological disorder. And, in my opinion, that's why they're so ridiculously boring. DC Fans sign-up to see a charismatic psychopath wreck havok on Gotham and GET a completely different person with completely different character traits and personality disorders. Fleck is NOT a psychopath...and that makes these movies many, many things. A thought-provoking commentary on the anomie-prone decline of societal infrastructure, etc., etc. It does not, however, deserve Joker's name. Men like The Joker are not 'made' or 'molded' by society. They are, instead, the reason society invented locks for doors and safeties for firearms.

Yes. Yes. Yes, you want to watch it. Watch it! Watch it now.

I actually backpedaled into this Shining sequal after watching Rebecca Ferguson in 'Silo'. I was like, "I'm not sure I can picture her as a dubious Stephen King heavy". But she made a pretty good 'Rose The Hat'. The retro blue-green cinematography and overall aesthetic melded well with the original film, too. It's not a particularly scary movie and some of Stephen King's literary storytelling techniques just don't translate to cinema without winding-up sounding a little outlandish and nonsensical but the overall quality of the film compensates for that. It's a pretty classy horror flick. Charming, even.

It's a straight-up tragedy this movie didn't get a prequal and two sequals. It might be one of the best low-budget Holly Horror films I've ever seen.

Hit and miss. When it hits, it hits hard with Grade-A Hollywood Horror. When it misses, it misses wide and it misses gaudy. Some of the episodes outclass most full-length feature films. Others are more on-par with Stephen King's tackiest straight-to-tv short stories. My advice? Ride it out. Some of the directors for each custom-tailored episode will drop the ball. But some of them will straight-up knock your socks off. It's a rogue's collection of horror. Something in The Cabinet will be worth your time.

It's like watching a two-season-long pilot episode. It's so slow that you could strap a turtle to a tricycle and that little guy would find a way to lap this show 3 times before something interesting happens. The production value is there. So is the talent. But it's all just a miasmic march towards nothing. For your time, you'll get a bunch of Smurfs bickering. And that's pretty much it. This is a high-production-value Shakespearean tragedy that never seems to advance past its' Act 1 foreshadowing. You'll say, "Oooh!" and, "Ahhhh!" right upto the point in which you finally realize that your totally normal IRL life is actually more eventful than the endless stream of needlessly long rants and repetitive posturing that this show presents to you week-after-week. I've seen mandatory HR videos on VHS at work that are more eventful.

It's addictive! But it's addictive like an abusive relationship. lol! This game has issues. You will definitely have to mod it on a PC if you want to use The Ancestral Armor and it's just generally not a good idea to even try it out on an X1 because it crashes A LOT. It runs smoother if you install ALL the dlc BEFORE your first playthrough instead of during NG+ and the framerate drops are notoriously consistant with any Firaxis title. It's not XCOM 3. It's not! And there are some significant micromanagement/ease of access issues to its' functionality and overall design that quite literally render whole aspects of the game to a tediously repetitive chore. lol! But if you're a massive Marvel fan and you really dig Magik, Ghost Rider, Wolverine and The Avengers? It's probably still one of the better Marvel games out there. It's not 'for everyone', though. The turn-based cardplay mechanics are VERY 1984 and, although the animations and mission downtime outweighs these last-gen mechanics, it can be kind-of frustrating at times because your heros' deck options are super limited and so are your RPG mechanics. You can be good, evil and neutral but no matter how you build your deck you will quite literally still be Scorpion from Mortal Kombat and nothing you say or do impacts the story itself in any way, shape or form. My advice? Lean into it. Know going in that you will be absurdly frustrated with the glitches if you're a completionist, absurdly angry with the frame-rate drops and crashing if you like to play super-long sessions and ultimately very unhappy with the overall RPG mechanics if you're expecting to custom-tailor a truly unique superhero in true Bethesda fashion. But you WILL get about 200 hours with some awesome Marvel superheroes, a fairly epic cookie-cutter storyline and walk away quoting some pretty catchy zingers. Iron Man, in particular, is pretty hilarious. All-in-all, it's a pretty flawed product but it has a lot of charm. Specific Advice: 1) Do not build your deck around 'Summon Charlie'. It's the second worst card in the game. 2) The 'evil' build is straight-up diabolical if you mod your whole deck to 'quick' or 'free'. 3) Every single character (even the ones you consider 'weak' or 'underwhelming') can be unstoppable if you build and mod them correctly but they're ALL reliant on quick/free cardplays that generate heroism. Don't build topheavy and take the time to learn how each character works. Characters like Iron Man, Nico, Ghost Rider, Deadpool and Blade can either be an incredibly frustrating and clunky mess or a force of unmitigated destructive capacity depending on how you build and mod them. There ARE right-and-wrong ways to build them and there ARE good-and-bad cards, mods and uses for each of them. Keep that in mind because you can do a lot of damage to your team just by shuffling-in the wrong cards and rarity does not always equal quality. Some of the best cards are commons. Deadpool, for example, can be utterly useless if you're not using him correctly, Ghost Rider's highly volatile due to his high-risk high-reward mechanics and Iron Man's 'redrew' system can really backfire on you if you're not paying attention. 4) Pet the dog and the cat. Every day. Every day! 5) Overdrive Serum and Vampiric Essance are invaluable but consumables, in general, can be huge gamechangers in-a-pinch. Don't overlook them. Use them!

It's one of those movies you'll catch some Sophomore Cinema Major fresh out of his/her 201 class droning on and on and ON about. There are elements at play, here, that express cinematic sentimentality as high-art. However, it unilaterally fails to capture your attention with it. Plotlines will progress and characters will evolve but it's all wasted on the film-maker's bloated self-importance. The film WANTS you to recognize its' brilliance. It has low self-esteem. So it just winds up being a boring analogy of existential dread that, for the most part, never even needed to be expressed in such a tediously overcompensated way. There are mandatory HR videos on VHS being played in 10,000 offices right now that can hold your attention span better.

This film's a straight-up callback to some of the best kung fu classics and 90's anime ever made. Does it 'bring anything new' to Hollywood? Of course not. But it delivers! The actors bring a level of brutality to the flick that, frankly, I wasn't expecting. The soundtrack is true to the retro-juice of the genre and composed by The Ell Michaels Affair with enough quality swagger to leave you 'Youtubing' the score. The whole thing's built from grindhouse B-flick roots but directed with solid A-game and production value. And it's user-friendly. You don't wanna miss it. Ignore the critics! This is oldschool kung-fu action gold. It'll be a cult classic by next Friday. You'll click on it thinking, "Eh. This looks kinda lame" and wind-up totally hooked on it all the way to the end. Bill and Jessica 'bring it' and H.J. Benjamin (Archer) narrates it like a BOSS. The writing's intentionally ridiculous and self-aware but the TWIST at the end'll remind you that this is not a minor-league script. It's an all-around flawless representation of its' roots and a pretty fun ride from start-to-finish.